li I 



Spirit, 

SOU Land 

Body. 



ill 







Copyrights 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



Spirit, Soul and Body 



BY 



Rev. J. Hudson Ballard, A.M., 



PRINCIPAL WILSON MEMORIAL ACADEMY. 



NEW YORK: 

Alliance Press Company, 
692 eighth avenue. 






COPYRIGHT 

A. B. Simpson 
1910 



©CLA268887 



TO 



MY MOTHER 



PREFACE. 

This book had its rise in two sermons de- 
livered t by the author before his deeply 
loved congregation in Gospel Tabernacle 
Church, Los Angeles, California. The sym- 
pathy there manifested in the spiritual re- 
lations of The Body and The Mind and the 
encouragement then given by these dear 
people led to a further study and extended 
presentation elsewhere of various divisions 
of this large subject. These are now gath- 
ered into somewhat of a whole, and with 
one or two added subjects are reluctantly 
laid before the thoughtful readers of the 
Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The in- 
completeness and imperfection of the entire 
series of studies are too obvious to demand 
more than a mere acknowledgment on the 
part of the author of enforced responsibility 
therefor. 

Throughout this series an effort has been 
made to hold the discussion true to three 
standards. First of all it has been endeav- 
ored to stay very close to the Word of God. 
Again the practical value of actual Christian 
experience has ever been kept in mind. In 
the third place scientific and technical errors 



vi Preface 

have been carefully guarded against. The 
book is not dogmatic, nor does it profess to 
be final. It is aimed to be suggestive and 
inspiring toward further study. 

May the Lord be pleased to make this 
message a source of strength and purity 
among His people, by the power of the Holy 
Spirit, rather than a cause of confusion and 
uncertainty. If He shall condescend to do 
so all the Glory shall be His. 

NYACK-ON-THE-HUDSON 

MAY, 19 IO. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. 
The Importance of the Body 9 

Chapter II. 
The Importance of the Body. ........... 21 

(Continued) 

Chapter III. 
How God Honors the Body 37 

Chapter IV. 
The Sins of the Body 62 

Chapter V. 
The Body and Religion 80 

Chapter VI. 

The Body and Religion 94 

(Continued) 

Chapter VII. 
The Sins of the Mind 130 

Chapter VIII. 
Sins of the Mind 130 



viii Contents 

Chapter IX. 
The Redemption of the Mind 149 

Chapter X. 
The Sanctification of the Will 171 

Chapter XL 

The Sanctification of the Will. 183 

(Continued) 

Chapter XII. 
The Sanctification of the Emotions 201 

Chapter XIII. 

The Sanctification of the Emotions 218 

(Continued) 

Chapter XIV. 
Soul and Spirit 236 

Chapter XV. 
What is the Heart? 248 



Chapter I. 
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY. 

IN order to appreciate the spiritual value 
of the body, and to give good heed to the 
Scriptural admonitions concerning the 
body, we must first come to realize its 
great importance in our Christian life. To 
some people it may appear strange that a 
book which aims to lead on to the deeper 
life in Christ should devote a large portion 
of its contents to the subject of the body. 
The body is generally considered by spirit- 
ual people to be crude and carnal, and not 
to be brought into the inner circle of spirit- 
ual consideration. But we need to have our 
attention called to the fact that the inter- 
ests of the body make up almost our en- 
tire earthly life. Inasmuch as Christian ex- 
perience does not consist in elusive dreams 
or in pictures of what we shall enjoy in 
heaven, but is made up of our actual daily 
life, it becomes apparent immediately that 
any element which influences a large por- 
tion of our daily life becomes a factor in 
our spiritual experience. This is true of 
the body. Careful consideration of the sub- 



io Spirit, Soul and Body 

jects suggested in this chapter will impress 
the candid reader that the body occupies a 
place of supreme interest in the activities of 
our daily life, and for this reason it should 
be very carefully taken into account in our 
efforts to achieve complete spiritual victory 
while on earth. The statement that the 
body is exceedingly important is supported 
by the following considerations. 

I. The body is important because of the 
Time it takes. 

Under this heading mention may be made 
first of all of the time the body requires for 
sleep. Children sleep from 12 to 15 hours, 
aged persons from 5 to 8. The average time 
spent in sleep by an adult is just about eight 
hours per day, which is one-third of his en- 
tire earthly existence. This is a serious 
proportion of our earthly life to be appropri- 
ated entirely by the body. For it must be 
borne in mind that sleep is required by the 
body rather than by the mind. The mind 
does not grow weary, the will does not lose 
its force, the emotions do not become ex- 
hausted, but it is the body, the brain, the 
nerve system which wears out and must be 
refreshed by sleep. If we should go no 
further than this one point, the body would 



The Importance of the Body 1 1 

be worthy of no small degree of considera- 
tion, inasmuch as its demand for sleep robs 
us of the voluntary use of one-third of our 
earthly life. 

2. It takes a good amount of time to 
cleanse the body. It takes some people less 
time than it ought to take, but with those 
who attend to the proper care of the body 
as they should, considerable time is ex- 
pended in this way. It costs more or less 
moreover to provide apparatus and material 
to cleanse the body. Even the soap that an 
adult person has used throughout his life, 
if converted into money, would amount to 
a surprisingly large missionary offering. All 
this time and the accompanying work and 
worry is to be charged up to the account of 
the body. 

3. It takes a large amount of time to 
clothe the body. Some people dress for 
every meal and eat four times a day; and 
when it takes them an hour or two to dress, 
we have here an unusual portion of the day 
given up simply to clothing the body. If 
on that Great Day all the mirrors are per- 
mitted to tell their story, what revelations 
will be made. The average Christian spends 
more time in dressing and adorning his 



12 Spirit, Soul and Body 

body, or hers, than in clothing the soul with 
humility, or putting on the garments of 
praise. All the time spent in clothing our 
mortal frame goes to the account of the 
body. 

4. It takes much time to house the body. 
It also calls for a great deal of effort and 
expense. We settle back comfortably in 
the cushioned pews at church and sing, "A 
tent or a cottage, what do I care," but we 
seem to care just the same; and all this care 
to comfortably, beautifully and healthfully 
house ourselves is for the body. The spirit 
is already housed within our mortal flesh so 
our time must be given to providing for the 
housing of the body itself. If all the time 
consumed in house hunting were considered 
alone, it would, for most people, amount to 
a greater period than the total time spent 
in searching for the riches of heaven. And 
this is all for the body. 

5. The time required to feed the body is a 
large factor in this list. Three times a day, 
unless we are anti-breakfast cranks, must 
the body be fed; if we are English it may 
be four times or five. It may be we have 
read our Bibles or it may be we have not, 
but we must surely have our meaL anyhow. 



The Importance of the Body 13 

No matter how our spiritual interests suf- 
fer the need of the body for food is prompt- 
ly and regularly attended to. We may not 
have time to pray, but we always have time 
to eat, — and this time at the end of a year 
amounts to hundreds of hours. 

We have glanced at the time it takes to 
apply to the body a number of necessary 
things. Let us continue this inquiry by 
calling attention to the fact that it takes 
even more time to prepare these things for 
being applied to the body. 

1. For instance, it takes a large amount 
of time to get the clothes ready to wear. 

There must be trips to the stores, with 
their accompanying amount of talking, fret- 
ting and weariness ; there must be great at- 
tention given to matching colors and to har- 
monizing shades of cloth with the complex- 
ion of the skin, etc. ; and then there must 
be the long and trying experience with the 
dressmaker or the tailor, and with all the 
fitting and trying on and altering this takes 
time indeed. And when we consider the 
amount of time someone has had to spend 
in hard labor in order to earn money enough 
to pay for all this, the time-total for the 



14 Spirit, Soul and Body 

clothing of the body is decidedly increased. 
We use up more brain matter over obtain- 
ing a new garment, as a rule, than we do in 
many times that number of hours spent 
in praying for the salvation of the lost. But 
how about the cloth: where did it come 
from? The man who sells it to us says it 
is all wool. It has taken a good while to 
make that cloth. A great many people have 
spent hours and hours working on it in the 
mills. And back of the mills is the amount 
of time to be added during which the far- 
mer was raising the sheep which grew the 
wool, time extending from the perplexing 
experiences with the stubborn lamb through 
all the hours of watchful care over the 
growing animals until the wool was finally 
sent to market and sold. Other items of 
time might be included, but this is enough 
to remind us that in order simply to clothe 
the body dozens of people spend hundreds 
of hours preparing the clothes to be worn. 

2. It takes a longer time to prepare a 
house for the body. Before the boards are 
put into the building they have to be worked 
on in the planing mill, and before they reach 
the planing mill they have to be cut in the 
forest and transported to the saw mill, — all 



The Importance of the Body 15 

of which takes a great deal of time. If we 
were to count in this list the time during 
which the tree was growing — the tree that 
furnished the boards that went into a house 
for the body — the result would be greater. 
After the lumber and hardware is all pre- 
pared through these long-drawn-out proc- 
esses of many years and is finally ready to 
be put into a house, the time consumed in 
actually constructing the building is consid- 
erable, especially if we count in the total 
time of all the men who work on the house. 
It takes the masons, the carpenters, 
the bricklayers, the painters, and above 
all the plumbers, a great many hours 
to get one "tent or a cottage" in condition 
to house three or four bodies. But to this 
list is to be added still the time which the 
owner has had to work in order to obtain 
money to pay for this house and the build- 
ing of it. Often the savings of almost an 
entire life time are put into a house, which 
thus represents hours upon hours, years 
upon years, of hard work. All this time 
goes just for housing the body. 

3. The time required to prepare food for 
use by the body is very great, and is seldom 
realized. The work of the woman who cooks 



1 6 Spirit, Soul and Body 

demands her attention a good while before 
the rest are called to the table; and after 
one meal, she must clean the dishes, put 
the room in order, and then start in peeling 
potatoes for the next meal, etc. This is re- 
peated several times a day, week in and 
week out. All this is not for the soul, but 
for the body. An immense amount of ex- 
pense, which represents time spent in earn- 
ing money, would be spared if we did not 
need to eat. We would not need to build 
a kitchen to our house, nor a pantry, nor a 
dining room; we would not need to spend 
money for stoves and kitchen utensils, for 
a refrigerator, for table linen, silver, china 
or glass-ware. It would make a great dif- 
ference indeed in our earthly life if we did 
not have to take so much time for things 
connected with the feeding of the body. But 
before the food comes to the house it al- 
ready has a long history back of it. We 
must count in the hours when the poor far- 
mer had to get out early mornings to sprin- 
kle Paris green on his potato vines, it may 
be, in order to furnish potatoes for some- 
one's body, and we must add the hours 
spent in sowing, cultivating, hoeing, weed- 
ing, digging and marketing the supplies 



The Importance of the Body 17 

demanded by human bodies. To this more- 
over must be added the time given to 
raising cattle, to slaughtering them, to dis- 
tributing them from the Meat Trust abat- 
toir to the wholesalers and from the whole- 
salers to the retailers and from the retail- 
ers to the kitchens of those who are going 
to take this meat into their bodies. Just 
one ordinary dinner of beefsteak and pota- 
toes, with one vegetable, one salad and a 
dessert, represents the consumption of an 
almost incredible amount of time and en- 
ergy. Let us never forget that this entire 
list of hours and weeks and years goes down 
to the account of the body. 

No one should say that these things are 
wrong, just because they take so much 
time. It is a part of God's plan for man to 
work, even if it does turn out to be a fact 
that practically all his work has to do with 
his body. This fact, indeed, only serves to 
emphasize the importance of the body in ac- 
tual life, which, we must always remember, 
furnishes the occasion for spiritual life. If 
one were to say that nine-tenths of man's 
earthly existence is directly associated with 
the interests of the body, would he not be 



1 8 Spirit, Soul and Body 

speaking too conservatively? The longer this 
subject is considered the more probable it 
seems that it is more likely to be ninety- 
nine one-hundredths of our earthly life 
from first to last which we find given up to 
activities which center on our bodies. This 
is why a woman works all day, this is why 
a man goes early to his labor and returns 
wearied at night, — for the sake of the body. 
But someone objects, — You have forgot- 
ten the years which the young spend in 
school, from 10 to 20 years, and this is all 
for the mind, and not for the body. A lit- 
tle further consideration of this objection 
proves it to be untrue. Why, we may ask, 
do the children go to school; is it because 
they are enamoured of learning, or because 
their parents are so devoted to culture? 
Hardly this. What is the real thing which 
drives them to school? Someone answers, 
It is that they may receive an education. 
And why do they need an education? They 
must have an education in order to make a 
good living. And for what do they need to 
make a good living? For the body, — that is 
all. The final demands of the body for hous- 
ing, clothing, feeding, etc., are the things 
which drive the children to school. Money 



The Importance of the Body 19 

is needed to purchase these things ; and 
money cannot be obtained very easily with- 
out an education. If it were not for this, 
neither parents nor the State would make 
education compulsory. We send our boys 
to learn arithmetic in order that they may 
some day be able to buy clothes for them- 
selves ; we send our girls to learn grammar 
in order that they may some day be worthy 
of a husband who will provide a house for 
them ; and we ourselves sometimes take ad- 
vanced studies, and read up at home, in or- 
der that we may obtain a better position 
in the business world and perchance be 
surer of our ability to supply food for our 
own bodies. To be sure there is a very small 
amount of time given to literature and art 
for the simple enjoyment of these things 
in themselves, but with the average person 
this is almost too small to compute. Art for 
art's sake is extremely rare. This objection 
concerning school days being disposed of, 
it seems to remain an unchallenged state- 
ment that the demands of the body are con- 
nected with almost the entire sum of the 
earthly hours allotted to us by our Creator. 
If the body is so important as all this sim- 
ply because of the time it takes, surely it 



20 Spirit, Soul and Body 

ought not to be neglected in studying the 
fundamental problems of a balanced and 
complete Christian life. 



Chapter II. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY. 

(Continued.) 

THERE are many more reasons in addi- 
tion to those brought forth in the pre- 
ceding chapter why the body occupies 
a position of very great importance in our 
earthly life. We shall proceed to mention 
some of these, although they need not be 
given as extended a treatment as the first. 
It is to be borne in mind throughout the 
reading of these pages that the body is thus 
emphasized because through its evident 
domination of our earthly life, it is continu- 
ally influencing our spiritual life. For this 
reason we must consider it carefully. Let 
us continue to note its importance. 

II. The body is important because of its 
Burdens. 

i. One of the burdens of the body is wear- 
iness. This is a very simple word, but there 
are thousands who experience such intense 
weariness as cannot be described in words. 
When one is thoroughly tired out life seems 



22 Spirit, Soul and Body 

to lose many of its reasons, and things look 
entirely different. An experience of com- 
plete and prolonged exhaustion is an awful 
thing to pass through. Now it is the body 
which grows weary. The mind and soul 
do not tire, but the body, the mechanism, 
becomes worn out and needs to be rested 
and restored. It is because deep weariness 
effects the actual experience of all who come 
under its power that we name it as one of 
the reasons why the body is important in 
spiritual life. 

2. Another burden of the body is pain. 
It is not according to the theology of some 
of us to have much pain, but pain seems to 
be very inconsiderate of our theology and 
often comes in spite of our protesting. The 
world is full of pain, — Mrs. Eddy to the 
contrary notwithstanding. When acute 
pain reigns within us, it is for the time being 
the most real thing in the world to us. Pain 
is of the body, To be sure, there would be 
no pain if there were no mind to register 
the pain: but pain does not arise in the 
mind; it has its cause in some disturbance 
of the organs or tissues of the body. We 
can say therefore that pain is a bodily thing. 
Moreover, pain is very important because it 



The Importance of the Body 23 

interferes with all our mental and spiritual 
activities. We cannot read the Bible or 
pray when we are in great pain, we scarce- 
ly can keep our thoughts in any orderly 
fashion at all. 

3. Disease is another of the burdens of the 
body. We are constantly surrounded by 
disease-bearing bacteria, which slip into our 
organisms so easily to cause distress and 
death. Argue as we may and think as we 
please, it remains a fact nevertheless that 
the inhabitants of the world are practically 
all afflicted with disease of some form or de- 
gree. It is asserted by medical authorities 
that very few men and women are truly 
whole and healthy; either organic or func- 
tional disturbance interferes with the per- 
fect life of almost every member of our hu- 
man race. Practically no bodies are nor- 
mal and true to the physical ideal. Now, 
disease weakens our power to think and 
meditate, bears down on our spirit, reduces 
our liberty for service, affects our attitude 
toward the world and in many other ways 
seriously interferes with our actual life, — 
even if it does not bring that life to an un- 
desired end. We are are well justified in 
saying that disease, with its awful ravages 



24 Spirit, Soul and Body 

on the one hand, and its subtle inner in- 
fluences on the other, is one of the burdens 
which makes the body an important factor 
in real life. 

4. Among some of the other burdens of 
the body may be mentioned the loss of any 
of the senses. These five chief senses which 
we use so constantly are not appreciated 
until one of them is taken away. What a 
difference it makes in our actual life when 
the sense of hearing is removed or when 
we are bereft of the power to see ! And all 
this, it must be remembered, is of the body, 
for the mind could still hear and the mind 
could still see if the bodily mechanism were 
unimpaired. There are thousands of peo- 
ple whose pleasure and manner of living 
is greatly interfered with and whose use- 
fulness is seriously restricted and whose 
view of this world and grasp of its meaning 
is deeply affected, because just one of the 
five senses is destroyed. What a great 
amount of damage to our inner life can be 
wrought by some irregularity in this divis- 
ion of this body of ours ! 

5. Sometimes the body is wounded or 
crippled, or abnormally formed; and how 
great is this burden to those who have to 



The Importance of the Body 25 

bear it. What a difference it makes in their 
lives, how it often turns years of expected 
sunshine into long drawn out days of dark- 
ness and sorrow. No one can appreciate 
the importance the body plays in daily life, 
until he has been visited with some afflic- 
tion which deprives him of the full use of 
it, even for a brief season. 

6. The question of temperature furnishes 
more burdens for the body. In the summer 
time it seems as if men and women devote 
their chiefest energies to keeping cool. They 
take expensive trips to the mountains and 
the seashore, and drink harmful cold drinks, 
and indulge in a great deal of fretting and 
worrying in an effort to keep from melting. 
They sit and fan themselves so vigorously 
that the body generates more heat through 
the exercise than the fan can remove. It 
is too hot to go to church, too hot to read 
the Bible, too hot to think. Bow strange 
that a few degrees change in temperature can 
so upset our life. In the winter all this is 
reversed. Every effort is made to keep 
warm. Far more money is spent in pur- 
chasing coal than was spent in the summer 
for buying refrigerator ice and cold drinks. 
We put on heavy clothing, invest in expen- 



26 Spirit, Soul and Body 

sive furs, eat a great deal of meat, close up 
all the windows, and are soon taken sick, 
which means more trouble of another kind, 
— all in an effort to keep the body warm. 
For we must ever remember that it is the 
body which grows hot in summer and cold 
in winter. The spirit is not affected direct- 
ly by the temperature of the air, but the 
body is very sensitive to it. If the room is 
too warm, we cannot enjoy our Bibles; if 
the church is a little too cool, we cannot pay 
attention to the sermon, we are thinking of 
our bodies all the time. It seems as if 
throughout the entire year we are strug- 
gling with the temperature, trying to make 
it fit our body. What an immense amount 
of time and effort goes in this direction, 
and how constantly influential is the body, 
the cause of it all ! 

7. Among the burdens of the body is one 
which is seldom noticed but frequently ef- 
fective, — bad air. Impure air has been re- 
sponsible for many naps in prayer meeting, 
it has induced many cases of sickness and 
has rendered powerless many earnest ser- 
mons full of truth. The question of venti- 
lation may seem a very worldly subject, 
but it has a remarkably close bearing on 



The Importance of the Body 27 

religious life. It takes more religious zeal 
than most Christians possess to receive prof- 
it from a church service of any kind when 
the body is oppressed and the mind intoxi- 
cated by vitiated air. This, we must re- 
member, is also one of the burdens of the 
body, and directly affects our spiritual life. 
All Satan has to do is to see that the air is 
tainted, and the preacher labors in vain, the 
Word of God comes without response. And 
yet there are some people who fail to see 
how the body has any direct bearing on 
religious experience. 

In considering the preceding burdens of 
the body, and the many others which might 
be added, the value of the list is that they, 
through their presence in the body, produce 
a great effect in the mental life, which in 
turn closely conditions the spiritual life. 
Many spiritual irregularities which have 
been attributed to deliberate attacks of the 
arch-fiend, have much more to do with the 
pressure of some of the burdens of the body 
than with Satan. Of course it was he who 
caused man to sin and bring upon himself 
all these bodily afflictions. But that hav- 
ing been accomplished, Satan could have 



28 Spirit, Soul and Body 

safely left the field, for he had loaded upon 
man a list of physical irregularities which 
would follow him throughout his genera- 
tions, and, whenever they appeared, affect 
seriously in one way or another his inner 
life, and thus directly interfere with the ac- 
tivities of his soul. For all of these reasons, 
surely the body should be considered a very 
important factor in religious life. 

III. In the third place, the body is impor- 
tant because it is our only means of know- 
ing the outside world. 

i. All that we know of the world around 
us we have received through the body. The 
mind of course learned it and it retains the 
knowledge, but the mind learned it only as 
the body was willing to communicate the 
information to the mind. What do we know 
of an orange but those things we have 
learned of it through handling it, which 
means bodily touch, or through seeing it, 
which means bodily vision, or through eat- 
ing it, which means bodily taste? The mind 
never came in contact with the orange, but 
the body did, and through the body, the 
mind was informed of the orange. All that 
we know of the fragrance of a flower, or the 
glory of a sunset, or the majesty of a range 



The Importance of the Body 29 

of mountains, we have learned through 
some of the senses of the body. All that we 
know of the voice of our friends and the 
faces of our loved ones, we have learned 
through the body: our ears have heard, our 
hands have handled, or our eyes have seen, 
— and all these are bodily activities. 

2. Moreover, all we know of the Word of 
God we know through the body. No reader 
of these lines has any knowledge of God's 
Word which he has not received through 
his bodily eyes as he has read it to himself, 
or his bodily ears as someone has read to 
him, or his bodily sense of touch, if he be 
blind and deaf. The Spirit of God, to be 
sure, interprets and illuminates the Word, 
but He never enlarges its meaning to our 
mind until our mind has first been informed 
of its presence and been given its state- 
ments. It lends added importance to the 
body to know that we are dependent entire- 
ly on it for our first knowledge of God's 
Word. 

3. But we go farther still and see that we 
are entirely dependent upon the body for 
all the messages of truth and experiences of 
life which the Word of God brings. This 
follows from the fact that we owe to our 



30 Spirit, Soul and Body 

body and its communicating senses, the first 
knowledge of the Bible. There is seemingly 
in every human soul, independent of the 
body, a dim notion of a great supreme Be- 
ing, but this, at its best, is very vague and 
practically meaningless for actual life. It 
is only through the works of God and more 
particularly the Word of God that we learn 
of the nature of God, and we have become 
acquainted with His works and His Word 
only by means of the body. The wonderful 
revelation of the character of God, the aw- 
ful consequences of sin, the glorious hope 
of eternal life, and the sweet story of the 
Saviour — all of which means so much to the 
Christian — we owe to the willingness of the 
body to communicate to the mind. Our 
very salvation itself we may trace through 
the body as an absolutely essential link. 
We never would have known of the way of 
escape from sin and of the possibility of eter- 
nal life through grace if someone had not 
spoken it to our bodily ears, or placed it 
before our bodily eyes, by them to be com- 
municated to the mind. 

Such statements as these may seem ex- 
treme, but they are scientifically correct. 
Such examples as Miss Laura Bridgeman 



The Importance of the Body 31 

and M'iss Hielen Keller prove these things 
to us. Recent years have demonstrated that 
Miss Keller has a superior mind, which of 
course she had potentially all her life. But 
with all her quick and strong mental ability 
what did she know of her mother, or of the 
relationship of a mother and daughter, until 
someone contrived a way of communicating 
these facts to her mind through her body? 
She was deprived of the use of only part of 
her bodily senses. She was not diseased or 
demented, but with all this, her inability to 
see and hear kept her shut up in a prison- 
cell of absolute darkness and gross igno- 
rance, from which there was no escape until 
the body became the willing channel of com- 
munication to the mind. What did Miss 
Kellar know of the Bible, what did she know 
of God, what did she know of free Salvation 
until her body told it to her mind? If we 
have not thought about these things in this 
way before they may appear startling, but 
they are most certainly true. Hiow impor- 
tant then is this body, which is the prison 
house of the mind, and which has the power 
to tell us wonders of the outside world, of 
people and things of God and heaven ; 
which also early in life has the power to 



32 Spirit, Soul and Body 

close up every avenue to the mind and 
plunge us into unbroken darkness and lone- 
liness ! The longer we consider the body 
and the part it plays in actual life, the more 
we must be impressed with its great impor- 
tance. 

IV. The body is important, furthermore, 
because through it alone can the spirit ex- 
press itself. 

We have never yet seen a human being. 
We have never touched another personal- 
ity, we have never really heard our dearest 
friend; we have simply come into contact 
through our bodies with some motions or 
conditions of their bodies. But the body is 
not the soul. The human spirit resides in 
the body, but it is not in any sense a part 
of the body, nor is the body a part of it. 
We say we hear someone speaking, but all 
we hear are the air vibrations set in motion 
by his vocal chords, which in turn are 
aroused to action by his mind. But he often 
has more in his mind than he can express 
with his tongue. Many people when they en- 
gae in marriage, marry bodies and not souls. 
A man marries fair skin, comely features, 
beautiful hair, symmetrical form. If some 
fair brides had been courted without the ar- 



The Importance of the Body 33 

tificial bodily expedients which the Lord 
was not pleased to supply by nature, they 
would never have been courted at all. All 
this emphasizes the fact that the body is 
not the spirit. We can, after all, only guess 
at the real soul of another by watching what 
the body does and listening to what it says, 
and then comparing these activities with our 
own similar action when we have certain 
thoughts and emotions. 

The inner life is much larger than we 
can express by the body. There are 
thoughts too delicate to put into words 
which would properly convey their mean- 
ing. There are emotions too deep to ex- 
press in any bodily demonstration. No one 
has ever been fully satisfied with his own 
bodily expression of the fullness of love. 
The very best we can do many times seems 
so unsatisfactory, so coarse and crude, com- 
pared to the richness there is in our inner 
life. Even in religious demonstration we 
feel that our gestures and expressions fall 
very far short of expressing the glory in 
our soul. Often such demonstration becomes 
uncouth, queer, fantastic, repulsive — simply 
because the body cannot express correctly 
what is in the mind. 



34 Spirit, Soul and Body 

But with all this what little expression 
we do give of ourselves comes through the 
body and what little good we do for others 
must be done by the body. If we have a 
message to speak, the bodily lips must speak 
it ; if we have a book or a letter to write, 
the bodily hand must write it: if we are to 
encourage some soul, that must be commu- 
nicated in one way or another through the 
body: if we are to do a deed of mercy, the 
body must enact it. Whenever we attempt 
to show sympathy or instil hope or impress 
a warning, we do it by means of the body. 
We speak, we gesture, we unconsciously 
use facial expressions, — all of which are 
communicative, but all of which are bodi- 
ly. Every one who preaches does it with 
his body: every Bible teacher teaches 
through his body : every missionary gives a 
message to the heathen by the use of his 
body ; every soul that is saved, is saved be- 
cause someone's body was made the willing 
link of communication between God and 
this man's need. Every form of personal 
influence and communication and every kind 
of secular and Christian activity is worked 
out through the body. An obvious excep- 
tion to this is the ministry of prayer, but we 



The Importance of the Body 35 

may learn later in the book that prayer is 
greatly dependent upon certain conditions 
in the body, and may be rendered practical- 
ly powerless through a few simple irregular- 
ities of the physical mechanism. We can 
never praise God before our friends with- 
out using the body, we can never let them 
know how happy we are or what peace He 
has given us without expressing it through 
the body. All these considerations go far 
in increasing our reasons for believing in the 
great importance of the body in actual life. 

5jS 5|J 5{C '»!• 

An attempt has now been made to show 
by four classes of facts how important the 
body is in daily life; and daily life means 
spiritual life. Spiritual life is not a world 
of dreams, or a series of hopes and aspira- 
tions. And in this actual experience of ev- 
ery day we find the body has a constant part 
and a controlling influence. It may seem 
out of place to consider the subject of the 
body when we are attempting to reach spir- 
itual heights and depths, but a broader view 
of the matter will show us that it is par- 
ticularly fitting that the body be consid- 
ered, and be considered first of all. The 
saints have been praying toward the heav- 



36 Spirit, Soul and Body 

ens and digging into the unknown recesses 
of their own souls and warring against the 
devil and inventing various theories to ac- 
count for their spiritual irregularities, and 
constructing elaborate formulas for build- 
ing up their spiritual life: but they have 
been dwelling on these things to the exclu- 
sion of the body, which has been considered 
common, coarse and carnal, if not beneath 
their notice entirely. The facts of the case, 
however, reveal to us that the body has had 
a great part in the experiences of the saints 
all the time. We must therefore come back 
to the body and begin there to re-construct 
our spiritual processes. This is an unused 
path and we must for the most part cut our 
way through. May the Lord give us wis- 
dom and courage to enter upon this phase of 
the subject frankly and sincerely. May He 
prepare us for a further consideration by 
deeply impressing us with the fact that no 
matter how much the soul and the mind 
have to do with spiritual life, the body has 
a great deal to do with it also, and that the 
controlling influence of the body in matters 
of the soul must first be discovered and then 
put under the power of the Spirit of God, 
before it will be of any use to go on to con- 
sider the higher things in themselves. 



Chapter III. 
HOW GOD HONORS THE BODY. 

THE subject of the body demands the 
attention of all thoughtful Christians 
not only because of a multitude of 
reasons which are apparent on the purely 
human plane, but also because God Himself 
has given unmistakable evidence of his in- 
terest in the body, and has indicated in vari- 
ous ways the high value He places on it . Let 
us consider some of the ways in which God 
reveals His estimate of the human body. 

I. God honors the body in forming it. To 
be sure they tell us that man comes from the 
apes and the apes from fish and fish from 
frogs and frogs from little bodies of slimy 
ooze, and so on down, but this fanciful lad- 
der of evolution takes too much for grant- 
ed. Above all, there is a great gap between 
the highest ape and the lowest man. The 
fact that animals can be listed up in some- 
what of an ascending series, does not at all 
prove that they developed in this form from 
lowest to highest, each being generated by 
the form beneath it. It simply shows that 
there are many points in common in ani- 



38 Spirit, Soul and Body 

mal life, which is but natural to expect, and 
that there is sufficient variety and number of 
species in the animal world to furnish ma- 
terial for a very general classification. How- 
ever, even if evolution were true, it would 
require the special working of a Divine Cre- 
ator to produce such a superior being as 
man, physically, mentally and morally, out 
of such an unpromising beginning as a tiny 
cell of slimy ooze. 

A careful study of the development of 
man must arouse sensations of devotion in 
every reverent mind. It is a fact that every 
human being is developed from a single del- 
icate microscopic germ cell. This divides, 
grows and sub-divides until we have in the 
adult an immense colony of about 29,000,- 
000,000,000 cells, all working together in 
marvelous co-ordination to carry out the 
complex chemical and mechanical functions 
of the human body. In practically every re- 
spect the egg cell of a human being cannot 
be found to differ from the egg cell of an 
animal far down in the series, for instance 
an ox or a dog, or from the egg cell of a 
plant like the onion. Each of these cells 
may have imbedded in it the same number 
of growth-directing chromosomes, and the 



How God Honors the Body 39 

same chemical constituents. But in every 
instance the human egg cell will develop a 
human being and never anything else, and 
the egg cell of a dog or the egg cell of an 
onion will always produce its own species. 
No one can follow the marvelous story of 
embryology without seeing the hand of God 
in the development of the human body. 

There are those who say that nature does 
all this. But what is nature, it is simply an 
abstraction and cannot be located or de- 
fined. No one has ever seen it, no one 
knows what it is : it is a convenient term for 
explaining the things we do not understand. 
There are those again who say that all these 
marvelous changes take place by the laws 
of nature. But laws have no energy, they 
are simply the expression of the methods 
according to which God works. The laws 
of nature are a classification of the se- 
quences of nature: they are descriptive 
terms and not an energizing force. Natural 
law never does anything: it simply states 
how things are done. God Himself is the 
Source of the energy. 

Our body then is the direct work of God ; 
not actually created, however, because crea- 
tion means the forming of something out of 



40 Spirit, Soul and Body 

nothing. God uses material in forming our 
bodies, but Hie Himself directs and causes 
their growth now just as truly as His own 
hand created the body of the first man. Our 
bodies are not the result of some fortuitous 
concourse of atoms, not formed by some 
blind force; they are not the results of ac- 
cident, they have not happened so; they 
are the direct result of the plan and power 
of the Creator. No one can know the hu- 
man body— so complicated, so delicately ad- 
justed, so marvelous in its adequacy to meet 
every need, so complete in its chemical lab- 
oratory, so fine in its nervous balance, so 
fitted to a multitude of ends — and not know 
that all this has come because an intelli- 
gent and benevolent Being has caused it. 
Our bodies are His handiwork; no one can 
possess a human body and say that God 
does not care for him, for the body itself is 
a satisfactory testimony to the fact that God 
willed that person into existence and 
planned his life for him. This is the first 
way in which God honors the body, — by 
forming it. 

II. God honors the body by giving His 
Son a human body. It was not because 
there were no other bodies in existence that 



How Ctod Honors the Body 41 

our bodily form was chosen for Jesus to 
inhabit; nor was it because God could not 
create other bodies. God's powers of cre- 
ation and invention are infinite. Even if 
there were no other bodies already formed 
which were to be chosen rather than ours, 
He has unlimited powers of invention and 
could have devised any sort of body at all. 
He has also absolutely limitless powers of 
creation and could have formed any kind of 
body for His own Son. But He passed by all 
these innumerable possibilities and passed 
by any other bodies which may have been 
already created by Him, and chose for His 
Son the human body. So we read in Phil- 
ippians ii. 7, 8: "He took upon Him the 
form of a servant and was made in the like- 
ness of man, and being found in fashion 
as a man He humbled Himself and became 
obedient unto death." 

The body in which God came to this world 
and manifested Himself to man was a nor- 
mally complete human body. The body in 
which the Saviour offered up Himself for 
the sins of the world and from which He 
shed His blood to atone for the universe, 
was a human body. When Jesus arose from 
the dead in His glorified form, He still re- 



42 Spirit, Soul and Body 

tained the image of the human body. More 
than this, when He ascended into the heav- 
ens and sat down at the right hand of God, 
He took with Him the glorified human body. 
To-day a body is in heaven sitting on the 
throne of the Majesty on high. That body 
belongs to Jesus Christ and possesses the 
human form. What a wonderful thought 
that somewhere up in tlfe heavens there is 
this very hour a living human body, glori- 
fied ! Paul speaks of Him in I. Timothy ii. 
5, as "The man Christ Jesus." And more 
than this, when H!e comes again He will 
come in this same human body. They will 
recognize Him because He will bear in His 
hands the wounds of the nails and in His 
side the bruise of the spear. That great 
sight which shall some day stir all the in- 
habitants of the earth to a degree to which 
they do not believe at present they could 
possibly be stirred, will be the sight of a 
human body descending on the clouds, ra- 
diant with glory, followed by a retinue of 
thousands of heavenly retainers, — the King 
of kings in the form of the body of man. 
This indeed is a most wonderful honor 
which God has bestowed upon our bodies. 
III. God has honored the body by pur- 



How God Honors the Body 43 

chasing it. This is told us in the 6th chap- 
ter of I. Corinthians, verses 19 and 20. 
"What, know ye not that your body is the 
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, 
which ye have of God and ye are not your 
own? For ye are bought with a price; 
therefore glorify God in your body and in 
your spirit which are God's." It is one of 
the oldest and commonest messages of the 
Gospel, that Jesus by Hlis own blood pur- 
chased the redemption of our souls. This 
verse tells us that at the same time He pur- 
chased our bodies. 

The value of a thing is almost always in- 
dicated by the purchase price. A gem which 
costs five times as much as another gem, 
is by common consent considered to be five 
times as valuable. What shall we say then 
of the value God has placed on our bodies 
by paying for them the life of His own dear 
Son, which has a value beyond calculation ! 
We look back to the cross with feelings of 
reverence and awe and unspeakable grati- 
tude, as we remember that there He gave 
His own life for our souls, and this thought 
helps us to realize how precious indeed are 
our souls. We should look back once more 
and see that there at the same time He gave 



44 Spirit, Soul and Body 

His life, He gave His all, to purchase also 
our bodies. How precious in His sight 
therefore are our bodies, and how we should 
value and care for them ! With all this we 
should remember that our bodies are no 
longer our own, but belong to Him, having 
been bought and paid for; ransomed, re- 
deemed by the Lord. They are ours not to 
abuse, they are ours to use for Him and 
Him only. 

IV. God honors the body, in the fourth 
place, by making the body the temple of 
His Spirit. I. Cor. vi. 19 tells us this, and 
also I. Cor. iii. 16, "Know ye not that ye 
are the temple of God and that the Spirit of 
God dwelleth in you ?" "Know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost ?" It is exceedingly instructive to no- 
tice how all three persons of the Godhead 
are interested in the body of man. God the 
Father plans it, and God the Son takes upon 
Himself the same form, and God the Spirit 
makes this body His temple. 

We would naturally expect the Scriptures 
to say that the soul or the spirit of man is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost, or at least we 
would expect the mind to be made His 
temple; but we find that to the body this 



How God Honors the Body 45 

honor is given. This does not mean of 
course that the Holy Spirit sustains no spe- 
cial relation to the mind or to the spirit of 
man. We read in I. Cor. vi. 17 the unfath- 
omable statement that "Hie that is joined 
unto the Lord is one Spirit." Whatever this 
does mean, we know its significance is very- 
great. But with all this nevertheless the 
Scripture states that the particular temple 
of the Holy Spirit is the body of man, rather 
than his intellect, his emotions, his will, or 
his higher spiritual nature. Why the body 
is thus mentioned rather than any of the 
other parts of man we may not know, but 
that it is thus peculiarly honored there can 
be no doubt. Somewhere wrapped up in 
this statement that our bodies are the tem- 
ples of the Holy Spirit there are probably 
meanings which are too deep for us to un- 
derstand at present. If the Lord tarries we 
may come to know more what all this 
means. Our prayer should be that He who 
has chosen the body of man as Hlis especial 
temple, may reveal to us what it all means 
for our body and our spirit. 

V. God honors the body, moreover, by 
establishing between Himself and the body 
a most wonderful relationship, "Now the 



46 Spirit, Soul and Body 

body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the 
body" (I. Cor. vi. 13). The first part of 
this statement grows out of some of the 
facts we have just considered, particularly 
the truth that He has purchased our bodies. 
He has a right then to tell us that "the body 
is for the Lord." This must mean, in a neg- 
ative sense, that the body is not for personal 
gratification and pleasure, or for selfish uses, 
or worldly activities. And it must mean, 
positively, that the body is, as the statement 
reads, particularly "for the Lord." H!e is 
willing to accept it, He really desires to have 
it, He can make use of it, it is of value to 
Him ; and we can give Him pleasure by ded- 
icating our bodies to Hiis will. The body 
thus appears to be necessary to Him for the 
complete carrying out of His plan for the re- 
demption of the world. 

The second part of the statement is still 
more wonderful — the Lord is for the body. 
We talk much about the Lord for the soul, 
but here we learn that the Lord is for the 
body. He pledges Himself to attend to the 
interests of the body, to protect the body, 
to minister tojthe needs of the body, to keep 
the body in good repair, and, in short, to 
make it one of the objects of His never- 



How God Honors the Body 47 

ceasing care and attention. This is also 
contrary to the generally accepted opinion 
that the body is too common and coarse for 
spiritual relationship. Nothing is common 
and coarse concerning which God says such 
wonderful things as these which He says 
concerning the body. These words help us 
to realize what great honor God bestows 
upon this body of ours. 

VI. In the next place, we may say God 
honors the body by healing it. Jesus healed 
men during His earthly life and continues 
to do it since He has ascended. The subject 
is epitomized in Matthew viii. 16, 17 — 
"When the even was come they brought 
unto Him many that were possessed with 
devils, and He cast out the spirits with His 
words and healed all that were sick; that 
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took 
our infirmities and bare our sicknesses/' 
This verse shows us both the scope and 
the basis of Christ's healing. He healed 
them all, no one was refused: this is still 
His willingness. As to the basis of His heal- 
ing, we find it in His atonement work. He 
healed them because He "Himself took our 
infirmities and bare our sicknesses." He 



48 Spirit, Soul and Body 

forgives our sins because He has borne our 
sins ; He likewise heals our bodies because 
He has borne our sicknesses. The two are 
on the same foundation. They are both pur- 
chased at the cross, with His blood, accord- 
ing to the complete plan of God. 

This one portion of truth concerning the 
body is far more common than any other 
portion relating to the body. In fact in most 
circles of Christian interest, when the body 
is referred to it is generally understood 
that the Lord's healing is meant. This is 
both a good indication and a bad one. It is 
good because it shows that many of the 
saints are learning that God thinks enough 
of the body to heal it; but it is a bad indi- 
cation because it reveals that very few saints 
think that God cares anything for the body 
apart from the healing of its diseases, which 
we are beginning to see is not true. Divine 
healing is not magnetic healing, or hyp- 
notic healing, or psychic suggestion; it is 
not drug healing, or quack healing: it is 
simply the sweet direct touch of the finger 
of the Creator, just as was given to hun- 
dreds and thousands when Jesus was on 
earth ; it is the same healing as that record- 
ed in the Gospels. 



How God Honors the Body 49 

But, because divine healing is true that is 
no reason why it should be made a hobby. 
It is strange that so many who accept this 
doctrine, immediately push it into a position 
of unscriptural importance. It is not by far 
the most important truth of the New Testa- 
ment; it is not even the most important 
truth concerning the body, in the New Tes- 
tament. There are many things far more 
necessary to know than the things of heal- 
ing. The message of God for the body 
includes a great many truths that are just 
as important as the message of healing. 
Part I of this book, while it has for its gen- 
eral subject, The Body, does not have for 
its leading topic Divine Healing; because 
divine healing Scripturally conceived occu- 
pies a somewhat subordinate place in the 
Gospel for the body. 

But with all this we must not be ashamed 
of our testimony to the truth of the Lord 
Jesus. Miany times He has healed, when it 
has been unexpected; and every time He 
heals, it is really undeserved. When physi- 
cians fail, and their councils disagree, when 
drugs are powerless and sanitariums cannot 
cure, and all the fads have been tried in 
vain — the diet fad and the water fad, the 



50 Spirit, Soul and Body 

sunlight fad and the fresh air fad, the exer- 
cise fad and the vegetarian fad, the scant 
clothing fad and the massage fad, the tem- 
perature fad and the health food fad, and all 
the other dozens of healing fads — when all 
these have failed and hundreds of dollars 
have been spent and yet the suffering con- 
tinues, then the Lord steps in and by one 
simple, mighty touch drives away all our 
diseases and makes us in an instant every 
whit whole, without money and without price ! 
How strange it is that men and women, and 
especially those in the Church of Christ, 
should bitterly antagonize such a wonderful 
promise as this. The simplicity and the 
sweetness of the Lord's healing and the 
spiritual impulse accompanying the physi- 
cal touch, make it an experience well worth 
being very ill in order to receive. The fact 
that God sometimes passes by the primary 
conditions of the spirit and the secondary 
conditions of the mind and reaches down to 
the common clay of the mortal body, touch- 
ing it with His own finger and healing it by 
His own power shows that He honors it 
very much. 

VII. God honors the body in the seventh 
place, by sanctifying it. That wonderful 



How God Honors the Body 51 

passage in the 5th chapter of I. Thessalo- 
nians declares this truth most directly. "The 
very God of peace sanctify you wholly; 
and I pray God your whole spirit and soul 
and body be preserved blameless unto the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful 
is He that calleth you, who also will do it" 
(vss. 23 and 24). In this passage the body 
is mentioned distinctly after mention has al- 
ready been made of the spirit and soul, 
showing conclusively that the "body" must 
refer to our corporeal frame as quite dis- 
tinct from the spiritual and mental portions 
of man. This verse puts the body on the 
same plane as the spirit and the soul, con- 
necting them all by the same equalizing 
conjunction, — "Spirit and Soul and Body." 
Paul enlarges a little upon what this sanc- 
tification means. The word sanctification 
in itself is a strong and significant Scrip- 
tural word and has a far wider application 
than most of its users understand. If the 
word stood alone without any qualifying ex- 
pressions, the verse would still contain the 
most remarkable statement. But the Spirit 
writes, Sanctify you "wholly," impressing 
upon us that this sanctification, which in- 
cludes the body as well as the spirit, is to 



52 Spirit, Soul and Body 

be entire, and to cover the entire subject 
in all its parts and to all its depths. The 
verse goes on to enlarge upon the promise, 
and says that the body, along with the other 
parts of man, is to be preserved unto the 
coming of the Lord. Not only that, but is 
to be preserved "blameless." Both of these 
words are really included in the largest 
meaning of the word sanctify, but the prom- 
ise is taken apart for us and we are brought 
to see some of its special meanings. What 
can it mean to have the body preserved, 
and preserved blameless ; to have the body 
sanctified and sanctified wholly? Whatever 
it means, we know that it is surely possible, 
for He who called us to this high calling is 
faithful, "who also will do it." 

If those friends who make such a hobby 
and by-word of sanctification were to en- 
large the meaning of their term to cover all 
that is pointed out in this verse, they would 
surely be far nearer the Scripture and their 
testimony would be far more acceptable to 
the hungry saints. Salification as it is 
generally conceived, means some narrow 
subjective inner experience, often expressed 
in terms which are Scripturally, logically and 
experimentally impossible, and frequently 



How God Honors the Body 53 

promulgated to such extremes that all care- 
ful Christians are shocked. Our objection is 
not that this kind of sanctification is too 
large, but rather that it is not large enough. 
It is too small in its object and too narrow 
in its operations. Real sanctification means 
everything for the soul and everything for 
the mind, and, what most concerns us just 
now, everything for the body. The church 
has neglected the body so long that we are 
far behind in the knowledge of truth for 
the body, and we need to pray and search 
much in order to catch up with the revela- 
tion already grasped for the soul. Then we 
may begin to understand what this wonder- 
ful promise for the body means. It is sure- 
ly safe to say that it means far more than 
anyone has yet experienced and even much 
more than anyone has yet understood. What 
an honor God bestows upon the body in thus 
lifting it to a level with the spirit and the 
soul in this most comprehensive work of en- 
tire sanctification ! 

VIII. Mention should be made in the last 
place of the fact that God honors the body 
by promising to raise it a glorified body. 
In Phil. iii. 20, 21, we may read, "Our citi- 
zenship is in heaven; from whence also we 



54 Spirit, Soul and Body 

look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 
who shall change our vile body that it may 
be fashioned like unto His glorious body/' 
The expression 'Vile body/' is unfortunate. 
It reflects the unscriptural attitude of the 
middle ages, when the body was considered 
carnal and corrupt and fit only for abuse and 
misuse: the spirit of asceticism is not the 
spirit of the New Testament. A better ren- 
dering of this clause is, "the body of our 
humiliation, "or, "the body of our humbling," 
as given by some. The Lord does not mean 
to tell us that our bodies are vile and are to 
be abused, but that they belong to the por- 
tion of our life which lacks the glory and the 
honor. These will come in the next world. 
The body is to have a real part in this heav- 
enly life. We learn this somewhat in detail 
in I. Thessalonians iv. and I. Corinthians 
xv., as well as in many other portions of the 
New Testament. The believers who have 
died are to be resurrected in body, and 
those who are living are to be translated in 
body. All the bodies then shall be glorified 
bodies like unto Christ's. 

A common impression of heaven is that 
it is a land of unclothed spirits, floating 
around on fleecy clouds and yet somehow 



How God Honors the Body 55 

managing to sit and play on a harp for sev- 
eral thousand years at a time. It is no won- 
der that this view of heaven does not ap- 
peal to many and that they wish to go there 
only because they do not want to go else- 
where. It is poor comfort to a man of ac- 
tivity to think that he shall spend eternity 
fingering a harp or lying on a cloud. An- 
other view of heaven that appeals to many, 
is that it is to be a place chiefly of nothing- 
ness. We are to exist but that is all. Ac- 
cording to this view our pleasure there will 
be in the fact that we have no bodies and 
enjoy no active life, no work to do, no bur- 
dens to bear, no responsibilities, hardly any 
thinking. We shall be happy because we 
shall forget everything and shall learn noth- 
ing new. We will blow around as invisi- 
ble spirits, scarcely knowing that we exist, 
and yet knowing it enough to know that we 
do not know anything else. This with 
some modifications is the Buddhistic Nir- 
vana. But such attenuated ghostliness does 
not appeal very strongly to healthy, think- 
ing and working men and women in this 
life. Heaven is not a land of perfected lazi- 
ness or a strange fading away place. It is 
a world of reality, as we can easily learn 



56 Spirit, Soul and Body 

from the Scripture : it is a real place as well 
as a condition. Not only is God there, but 
Christ is there, and in the form of a glori- 
fied human body. There is a city there with 
streets and walls. There are nations there 
and people with real bodies, because on their 
foreheads is to be inscribed His name. 
There are rivers and trees and fruit. There 
is a temple. And there are countless worlds 
— many of them probably worlds to be con- 
quered. There is work to do, for "His serv- 
ants shall serve Him." There will be far 
more responsibility in heaven than there is 
on earth. When the good and faithful serv- 
ants were rewarded by their Master for care 
over a few things, the reward took the form 
of greater responsibility over much greater 
things. And so will it be in heaven w T hen 
we are rewarded for the labors of the earth- 
ly life : we shall, if we have proven worthy, 
be given greater works to do. 

The thing which most concerns us now 
however is the fact that we are to have 
bodies in heaven. We do not know just 
how they will be formed, or what shall be 
their chemical composition, but that need 
not concern us in the least. We know they 
shall be spiritual bodies, heavenly bodies, 



How God Honors the Body 57 

glorified bodies ; and we also know that they 
shall be real bodies and tangible bodies. 
Philippians iii. 21 tells us that they shall be 
fashioned "like unto Hlis glorious body" ; 
which means that the body that Christ bore 
after His resurrection is the pattern of the 
bodies we shall bear in glory. Now we 
know of His Body that He could see and 
be seen, that He could be handled, that He 
could speak to be heard and could even eat 
in their presence. It is true also that His 
body was not subject to the law of gravita- 
tion, that He could render Himself visible 
or invisible at will, and that He could pass 
through solid doors as readily as through 
an open doorway. It is quite probable that 
there was no blood in His body: that had 
all been shed. There are some Scriptural 
reasons, which we cannot enter into at this 
time, for believing that iu our bodies as well 
as in His, the Spirit will entirely take the 
place of the blood, so that our flesh shall be 
literally permeated with the Spirit of God. 
It may seem that the expression "flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
heaven" is opposed to all this statement 
concerning a body in heaven ; but this verse 
probably wishes to teach us that heaven 



58 Spirit, Soul and Body 

cannot be obtained through human heredity. 
It also may be particularly worded, "flesh 
and blood," because in heaven the combi- 
nation will not be flesh and blood, but flesh 
and bones ; for we know from Jesus' own 
lips, that His glorified body with which He 
entered heaven, literally had flesh and bones 
— "spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
Me have." 

This body will not be subject to death or 
pain or even weariness. It will not have 
any of the burdens which have already been 
noticed as belonging to the earthly body. 
But this body can walk and work, can speak 
and sing, can see and be seen just as with 
Christ. There is some ground for believ- 
ing that the relationship between the body 
and mind will be reversed in heaven. As 
it is now the mind is to a large extent sub- 
ject to the body, and a slight disarrange- 
ment of bodily cells may interfere complete- 
ly with the activities of the mind. More- 
over while the mind can live in New York 
in one second and fly to San Francisco in 
the following second, it takes a long while 
to drag the body across the continent. In 
the heavenly life may it not be that then the 
body will be the complete servant of the 



How God Honors the Body 59 

mind and will express the mind and obey 
the mind as readily as though it were itself 
purely spiritual? In those days it may be 
possible to think of a distant star in one 
second and to cause the mind to transfer 
our bodies to that same distant star in the 
very same second. Our bodies may work 
with all the inner energy of the emotions 
and move with the rapidity of thought. All 
this, however, is not absolutely certain : but 
the probabilities are that it will be much 
grander than anything we can now con- 
ceive. The wonderful fact remains that 
God is to honor our bodies by transforming 
them into glorified bodies, and these, so far 
as we know, we are to inhabit throughout 
eternity. 

%. %. jjs ijs 

We have now noted eight ways in which 
the Lord has particularly indicated His val- 
uation of our body. Would that the Church 
valued the human body as much as the 
Heavenly Father values it; and would that 
the gospel for the body which is in the heart 
of God and in the text of Scripture were 
also in the understanding and experience of 
the people of God! There is one question 
we should ask ourselves before leaving this 



6o Spirit, Soul and Body 

division of our subject, — What relation is 
there between the present condition of 
sanctification in the earthly body and the 
future degree of glory in the heavenly body? 
Surely there must be some direct relation- 
ship between these two. There will un- 
doubtedly be varying degrees of glory and 
reward in connection with our glorified bod- 
ies ; and what would be a better basis upon 
which to determine these degrees of honor 
than that provided by the degree of sanctifi- 
cation of the body while we obtain on earth. 
This is a serious and a vital question and 
the Church of Christ needs to meditate on 
the matter. Surely because of future re- 
ward apart from any present blessing it is 
highly advisable to have our bodies as near- 
ly wholly sanctified as possible. The saint- 
ed Dr. Chapell used to say that he believed 
translation would come as the culmination 
of a gradual experience of increasing Di- 
vine life in the soul and body on earth. He 
thought that the saints who were worthy 
would become less earthly and more heav- 
enly, and still less worldly and still more 
heavenly, until soon the heavenly would 
predominate. And then, after a while, the 
heavenly would become almost absolute; 



How God Honors the Body 61 

until some day, as the next natural step in 
the transformation, the saints would step 
right over from earth to heaven without a 
shock. What a stirring conception this is. 
Whether or not it is generally accepted to 
its fullest extent, it surely is true in princi- 
ple. We should become so controlled by 
the Spirit of the Lord not only in soul, but 
also in body, that translation would not 
come to us as a shock or a great transition, 
but the next natural step upward, to which 
we had been leading through an unbroken 
process of transformation here on earth. Are 
we thus being changed, in spirit, in body? 



Chapter IV. 
THE SINS OF THE BODY. 

WE now need to look at some of the sins 
of the body, in order to realize more 
deeply our need of the sanctification 
of the body. The complete list of the sins 
of the body would be very long. We shall 
not attempt to cover it, but shall instead 
glance at a few representative classes of 
bodily sins. 

I. Sins of passion. Everyone who is 
abreast of the times is aware from his read- 
ing in the newspapers and magazines of the 
startling increase and spread of sensuality 
throughout the civilized world. France no 
longer is peculiar in this most undesirable 
condition of national morals. Wherever 
civilization has spread, the passions of the 
body are also conquering. In many heath- 
en lands things are much worse, while in 
some of them conditions are not so bad. 
The highest society of our own land is un- 
speakably corrupt; but because of wealth, 
most of the facts never reach the outside 
world. The life of the poor, because of its 
particularly difficult circumstances and en- 



The Sins of the Body 63 

vironments, offers occasion for an ever in- 
creasing number of the baser sins of the 
body. Our schools are infested by this aw- 
ful influence, so that it Is running a serious 
moral risk to send boys and girls to the 
common schools in these days. Things that 
used to be known only to adults are now 
common knowledge among the children of 
the grades. In the church also, this blast- 
ing influence is gaining ground. It is slow- 
ly creeping into the holiest circles, it is 
undermining many a religious life and ruin- 
ing forever the usefulness of many public 
servants of the church. Everywhere this 
sin is working. There seems to be a rot- 
ten breath from hell silently sweeping over 
the country and quickening the bodies of 
men to the worst deeds possible. We seem 
to be getting back to the days preceding the 
fall of the Roman empire, — while on one 
hand our civilization is increasing and our 
intellectual conquests are growing, on the 
other hand the moral foundations of society 
are being swept away. The past teaches us 
that frequently the period of greatest intel- 
lectual activitiy was contemporaneous with 
a period of great moral looseness, in which 



64 Spirit, Soul and Body 

the grosser demands of the body seemed to 
rise up with unusual force. 

We do not mean to say that the will has 
no place in this or any other form of bodily 
sin. The will, of course, is a final deciding 
factor; but in such sins as these the body 
furnishes the occasion and is the source of 
the stimulus. If it were not for the body, 
these sins would not be. The heading of 
this chapter, "Sins of the Body/' needs to be 
underscored at the word Body. Most of 
these things are acknowledged sins, but they 
are not generally acknowledged to be sins 
of the body. We need to see that these 
things have their rise in the body and 
reach the place of control in our lives be- 
cause the demands of the body are not dom- 
inated by the power of the Spirit of God. 
If only this one class of sins now under dis- 
cussion was abolished from social and 
church life, what a wonderful difference it 
would make in the moral soundness and 
spiritual genuineness of the nation and the 
people of God. If this one class of sins 
was kept out of the schools, what years of 
bodily distress and mental incapacity and 
perverted moral views would be saved those 
who are now yielding to the body far ear- 



The Sins of the Body 65 

Her than their progenitors were tempted to 
do. Satan is anticipating the years to come 
and by controlling the boys and girls in 
these unholy directions he is wrecking their 
lives for coming years. While the church 
is neglecting the body, Satan, who is fully 
aware of its strategic importance, is making 
great use of it in mortgaging by means of it 
the minds and souls of men. 

II. Sins of appetite. The most wide- 
spread of these is the appetite for strong 
drink. This, we need to see, is a bodily 
sin. Certain portions of the nervous sys- 
tem become artificially stimulated and de- 
mand a continuance of that stimulation. It 
is not only because the mind is not con- 
vinced of the harmfulness of strong drink, 
or because the will of its own accord chooses 
to indulge in strong drink, or because the 
emotions are satisfied by the miserable men- 
tal results which follow indulgence in strong 
drink, but it is because the body demands 
this particular form of stimulant, that men 
drink. Because men are such slaves to their 
bodies in the matter of strong drink, not 
only is their bodily condition wrecked, but 
their minds are impaired and their souls are 
lost. There may be many reading these 



66 Spirit, Soul and Body 

lines who have never felt very directly or 
forcibly the awful effect of the indulgence 
in strong drink, but it must not be forgot- 
ten that thousands upon thousands of men 
and women, including a large percentage of 
our youth, are absolute slaves to this awful 
habit. And wherever strong drink comes, 
destruction follows. It takes the most 
prominent professional men and makes them 
outcasts; it brings to failure the most suc- 
cessful men of business; it destroys the in- 
tellectual powers of those most favorably 
gifted by nature in this respect ; it takes the 
wealthiest and drags them down to the gut- 
ter. It has broken thousands of hearts, 
brought unspeakable agony to thousands of 
innocent lives, wrecked thousands of happy 
homes, dragged men to early graves who 
left behind them widows and fatherless chil- 
dren in the most distressing poverty, and 
above all, it has damned uncounted immor- 
tal souls. And all this awful list of dark- 
ness and destruction through strong drink 
must be laid at the door of the body, for in- 
temperance is a sin of the body. 

This curse is spreading even more rapidly 
than the blessings of civilization. When a 
ship carries a missionary or two to Africa 



The Sins of the Body 67 

it is quite likely to have several hundred 
barrels of rum for the natives. The white 
man's whiskey penetrates farther inland 
than the white man with the Gospel. There 
are tribes of heathen who have never yet 
heard of Jesus or seen a Bible, but who are 
already being destroyed by the ravages of 
American rum. We may attempt to con- 
demn the sin of England in forcing opium 
upon China, but what shall we say to that 
in the light of our own whiskey traffic with 
Africa? And all this because of the body! 
If somehow God could have arranged it that 
we might have gone through this life with- 
out this body, what an almost incalculable 
amount of trouble, sin and sorrow we would 
have been saved. 

But strong drink is not the only unsanc- 
tified appetite of the body. There are many 
who need to learn what God thinks of the 
sin of wrong eating. This may be sinful 
because of the extravagant waste of money 
in pampering to abnormal and unhealthy 
appetites when there are millions in other 
lands who never know what it is not to be 
hungry. It may also be wrong because it 
induces disease in the body, and brings on 
other conditions which are not conducive to 



68 Spirit, Soul and Body 

clear thinking and earnest praying. There 
are some who are just as much the slaves of 
their stomachs for needless food in quanti- 
ty and quality as others are slaves to strong 
drink. It means more than some think to be 
able to sit down and eat and drink to the 
glory of God, as the Scriptures require. If 
we were more careful in our eating, both 
as to kind and amount of food, there would 
be less disease in our bodies and less need 
for drugs or prayer. It is strange that 
some people can gormandize and overfeed 
themselves and then, when they become ill 
as the result, can turn pious at this strange 
and unexpected "visitation of Providence." 
If people would only learn how to feed 
themselves properly, they would find that 
from half to three-quarters of their bodily 
ailments and diseases were gone for good. 
It is a question how far we can go in pray- 
ing for healing when our bodily condition is 
caused by sinful eating. 

[Mention should be made also of the use 
of drugs. Some of these artificial stimu- 
lants as opium, morphine, cocaine, and even 
medicinal drugs, have disastrous physical, 
mental and spiritual effects which are very 
little known. It is an alarming indication 



The Sins of the Body 69 

of the times that even in our own land the 
use of opiates in private is increasing enor- 
mously. There are dozens of drug fiends 
to-day where there was but one a few years 
ago. These things not only undermine 
health and destroy mental powers, but per- 
vert the moral sense and interfere most di- 
rectly with spiritual experiences. They all 
center in the body. 

III. Sins of adornment. It is apparent to 
all that the matter of adornment is a bodily 
thing, and so this class of bodily wrongs 
needs to be emphasized by underscoring the 
word Sins, for it is not apparent to all that 
many of the practices in this direction are 
wrong in the sight of God. Sins of adorn- 
ment consist of two extremes, both of which 
are wrong. There are those on one hand 
who waste money on elaborate and unneces- 
sary personal adorning, and who are very 
proud of their trimmed-up appearance: there 
are those on the other hand who waste spir- 
itual energy on making themselves notice- 
ably plain and who take great pride in their 
plainness. 

It is unquestionably wrong, even as many 
magazines are contending, to wear as adorn- 
ment those things which have cost pain and 



yo Spirit, Soul and Body 

suffering to innocent birds and beasts. It 
is unquestionably wrong to spend twice or 
ten times as much money as is necessary for 
clothes when the heathen world is crying 
for missionaries who can be supported on a 
few hundred dollars a year and dying for 
the lack of Bibles which can be sent them 
for a few pennies each. Again, it ought to 
be unquestionably wrong for people to be 
more conscious of their dress than of their 
condition of soul. There are thousands who 
spend more time before their mirrors than 
they do looking into the mirror of the Word 
of God and who are much more disturbed 
over some slight violation of the latest style 
or fad of society attire than they are over 
great spots of sin in their inner life and 
great wrongdoing to their fellow men. There 
are those who go to church to display their 
gowns and millinery and who are extremely 
self-conscious as they walk the Sunday 
streets and float down the aisles, aware of 
the eyes of others being upon them. All 
this is the most miserable and despicable 
form of pride, and God can have no power 
or place in lives which are controlled by 
these things. Those who are more con- 
cerned over the possible adverse criticism 



The Sins of the Body 71 

of some other person on their own dress, 
than they are over the displeasure of God 
concerning perverseness of spirit, are in a 
sad and dangerous condition. It is strange 
how much money can be squandered on 
devising artificial attire for the body and 
how much time and interest can be devoted 
to preparing the body for a public parade. 
People seem to think that if they can only 
make a good impression outwardly that is 
the end of the matter. They forget that 
God looketh at the heart. 

But mention must also be made of the 
corresponding sin of those who go to the op- 
posite extreme in this matter of dress. 
There are those who take pleasure in being 
contrary to every conventionality of their 
day and whose minds are so narrow and 
whose hearts are so little as to think that 
God's special favor will rest upon them sim- 
ply because they attire themselves in some 
manner different from the world. The pe- 
culiarity which is to characterize God's 
people is not to consist essentially in dress, 
but in a pure heart and in a zeal for good 
works. There are those who think that no 
matter how the heart and life may be, a 
certain degree of color in the dress or some- 



72 Spirit, Soul and Body 

thing worn on the body which happens to be 
worn by the people in general at the same 
time interferes so seriously with that per- 
son's relationship with God that there is no 
posibility of Divine favor until the colors 
are removed and the attire becomes notice- 
ably contrary to all prevailing custom. 
These seem to think that if they only dress 
in a certain pronounced extreme of plain- 
ness, they may do almost anything else they 
wish and their dress will bring them the ap- 
proval of God. No matter how they quarrel 
at home or slander their neighbors or gossip 
about their brethren and sisters or cheat their 
fellow-men in business, no matter how self- 
ish and angry they are, if they only dress 
with great plainness, they are perfectly and 
continually accepted of God. How strange 
it is that men's hearts can become so nar- 
row as to think that the favor of the Lord is 
bestowed upon human souls because they 
wear a certain style of garb or a certain cut 
of clpthes or a certain unpopular system of 
fastening their garments together. There 
are people who would rather commit a great 
outward sin than take the hooks and eyes 
off their clothes and substitute buttons in- 
stead. Surely we cannot believe that God 



The Sins of the Body 73 

is so small and narrow as to base Hlis deal- 
ings with us on such meaningless and trivial 
things as these. It is the heart He looks at 
and the actual life Hie considers, and there 
may be more purity of heart with the ordi- 
nary dress of the day than there is with 
some strained attempt at peculiarity. It 
must be remembered also that there is the 
same danger of pride in plainness of dress 
as in undue elaborateness of dress. With- 
out doubt there are many of the Lord's peo- 
ple who are proud of their plainness. This 
is just as wrong as to be proud of fanciness. 
We do not mean to say that the place of 
dress has no value in Christian experience, 
for it has. But the best way to decide it is 
not to deal with the dress question, but to 
get the heart and mind controlled by the 
Holy Spirit; then the matter of personal 
adornment will be adjusted easily and nat- 
urally. If Satan cannot cause God's people 
to do things which are deliberately wrong, 
he will get them to riding hobbies or push 
them to foolish extremes in unessential 
things, and will still consider himself fairly 
successful. In doing these things with the 
saints he is reducing their influence and 
greatly breaking down their value for serv- 



74 Spirit, Soul and Body 

ice,— which of course is his purpose. If he 
can get them greatly excited over some 
thing which does not matter much either 
way he knows that in doing so he is keep- 
ing their attention from the more impor- 
tant things. What a large amount of en- 
ergy has been used up over this question of 
dress, which should have been decided by 
one moment of careful, spiritually illumi- 
nated thinking. One touch of sanctified 
sense would have dispensed with the entire 
matter. But instead of that days and nights 
have been spent in agony, altar meetings 
have been held in abundance, prayer has 
gone forth by the hour, sermons have been 
preached which have exhausted the strength 
of the preacher and worn out the hearers, 
and a most disproportionate amount of spir- 
itual energy has been wasted. The church 
has none too great resources of spiritual 
force and she cannot afford to dissipate her 
power over these comparatively unessential 
things. This subject may not appeal di- 
rectly to some readers, but it is neverthe- 
less a matter of record that thousands of 
very active, sincere Christians have been 
disturbed deeply over this question of dress 
and have consumed spiritual energy in this 



The Sins of the Body 75 

direction which, if it had been turned upon 
the salvation of the lost or the evangeliza- 
tion of the world, would have accomplished 
something which was worth while. 

IV. Sins of overwork. The body is the 
temple of the Holy Spirit and must not be 
put out of repair. The body also is closely 
associated with the working of the mind and 
both condition the activity of the spiritual 
life, as we shall see later. This is another 
reason why spiritual vigor demands a prop- 
er condition of body. Physical weariness 
may not be wrong in itself but considered 
in the light of these wider relations, it may 
often become so. The sin of overwork is 
rarely recognized as a sin, but judging from 
its effects in the spiritual life it may most 
certainly be sinful. There are some people 
in this world who are forced to work con- 
tinually beyond their strength and are al- 
ways exhausted, but most of us are not in 
this unfortunate condition. We neverthe- 
less do a great amount of work which is 
unnecessary and unwisely timed. We work 
when we ought to pray and when we ought 
to rest before the Lord. There are thou- 
sands of Christian housewives who are rob- 
bing their spiritual life by slavish attention 



76 Spirit, Soul and Body 

to details of work. Not that carelessness 
and slovenliness should be encouraged; 
rather is it necessary for all the Lord's peo- 
ple to see that neatness and cleanliness in 
earthly affairs should accompany profession 
of Christ. But there are so many things 
that can be done around the house, espe- 
cially in troubling with the needless and 
art-less germ-collecting bric-a-brac which 
takes time and gives no valuable return, that 
it is necessary for many of these busy work- 
ers to be delivered from bondage to such 
things. Often a woman who tells her pas- 
tor that she cannot take time for prayer 
and reading of the Word because she has so 
much to do around the house, can sit down 
for several hours when company unexpect- 
edly arrives, and still the work does not 
greatly suffer, — which goes to show that if 
we really would we actually could take 
time for God. 

Another phase of the sin of overwork is 
that which has to do with a bad physical 
preparation for the Lord's day. It is wrong 
for those who are not actually compelled to 
do so, to work their hardest on Saturday 
and stay up their latest, when, as a result, 
on the following day they are in no condi- 



The Sins of the Body 77 

tion to attend to the Word of the Lord. 
How then can we say it is right to give to 
ourselves and to this passing life six days 
of our hardest labor and then to spend a 
good share of the Lord's day recuperating 
our exhausted bodies. Sunday is not to be 
the hospital for the other days of the week; 
it is not the last day, but the first day of 
the week, and we should prepare for no 
other day in the seven as we prepare for this 
sacred day. We should so arrange our work 
and order our sleeping that we would be 
fresher and more vigorous on the Lord's 
day than at any other time. He expects of 
us our best, and He should have it in respect 
to bodily condition as well as in everything 
else. 

The practice of many Christian workers 
in laboring too hard without sufficient bodi- 
ly rest, is also one of this class of the sins 
of the body. God has arranged it that our 
mental activity depends upon bodily condi- 
tions and he has also ordered that with 
very few exceptions our effectiveness in 
Christian work is dependent upon our gen- 
eral condition of mind. There is an ele- 
ment of personal quality in every success- 
ful experience of work for the Lord which 



yS Spirit, Soul and Body 

cannot be ignored. When the preacher is 
all tired out so that his mind does not work 
and his tongue can scarcely frame suitable 
words, when he is "dry" in his soul, it al- 
most always follows that the people receive 
no blessing. When there is vigor of body, 
alertness of mind, and freshness of spirit, 
the service is pretty certain to be far more 
effective. It is a mistaken view of conse- 
cration to consider that we are to labor in- 
cessantly for the Lord until we are all used 
up. By so doing we not only destroy our 
immediate usefulness, but we induce disease 
and even bring on premature death. Why 
this should be we may not understand, but 
it is a sad fact that if we will, we are per- 
mitted to destroy ourselves even by unwise 
and zealous overwork in the service of the 
Lord. We owe it to our future ministry to 
keep ourselves rested and refreshed. 

A prominent Christian worker who 
stands for the deep things of God was 
alighting at the Pacific Coast from a sleep- 
ing car after the long, hard journey across 
the continent. A zealous brother who wel- 
comed him took courage to rebuke him 
gently, saying, "I am surprised, brother, to 
find you squandering the Lord's money by 



The Sins of the Body 79 

riding in a sleeper." To this the sanctified 
traveler wisely replied, "I am not squan- 
dering the Lord's money; I am taking care 
of the Lord's body." Would that we all 
were as sensible in our sanctification as this 
man, and would that all Christians, espe- 
cially Christian workers, realized that the 
proper care of the body, particularly as to 
food and rest, is a directly spiritual dutv, 
and that a violation of the commonly ac- 
cepted laws governing the care of the body 
is a violation of the laws of God and a sin 
against the spirit. 

Let these four classes of sins of the body 
be sufficient for this division of our subject. 
Each class may be divided and elaborated to 
a great extent and to these four classes 
might be added many other groups. But 
these should be sufficient to remind us of the 
easy way in which the body makes it possi- 
ble to sin and of the great variety of the 
sins of the body, and also of the wide bear- 
ing of the body upon the condition of the 
soul. 



Chapter V. 
THE BODY AND RELIGION. 

LET us now look at some of the points 
of contact between this body of ours 
and our actual spiritual experience. 
We can not consider more than a few rep- 
resentative relations, but they will suggest 
many more to the thoughtful reader. 

I. The first point to be considered in con- 
nection with the bearing of the body upon 
religious experience has to do with the sub- 
ject of divine healing. Miention has already 
been made of the truth that the Lord heals 
our bodies. This we understand to be His 
highest will for all His children, and al- 
though only a few even occasionally reach 
this ideal privilege, yet nevertheless the pos- 
sibility remains for all. Shall we glance at 
a phase of the subject which is not always 
considered? It is this: A diseased condi- 
tion of the body almost always interferes 
directly with the activities of the spirit. 
When one is very weak, for instance, it is 
impossible for him to pray earnestly. When 
one is confined to his bed, he cannot go out 
and engage in Christian service. When one 



The Body and Religion 81 

has even a slight disorder it often makes it 
impossible for him to think sufficiently 
clearly to minister the Word to others. It 
takes but a little bodily affliction to keep the 
preacher from' his pulpit, and thus deprive 
many people of the Word of God and the 
expected blessing. When one is suffering 
pain, how can he meditate on the things of 
the Lord. ' It takes often only a slight dis- 
order in man's delicate digestive system to 
make it impossible to read the Scriptures 
with any appreciation. A sluggish circula- 
tion, a bad liver, a case of indigestion, or 
any one of a number of possible and com- 
mon bodily disorders, will quite likely de- 
prive us of lively interest in the activities 
of the Spirit, and for the time being render 
us spiritually inert and useless. 

If there were no other reason for believ- 
ing that it is God's will to heal our bodies, 
these considerations should furnish a reason 
which alone should be quite satisfactory. 
How can we be expected to believe that it is 
the Lord's will to have us in certain bodily 
conditions where we cannot work for Him, 
cannot read His Word, cannot think com- 
fortably of Him and cannot even pray? 

There are many who think that sick- 



82 Spirit, Soul and Body 

ness is sin. This statement should be cor- 
rected because sin comes directly between 
God and man while sickness does not. Sick- 
ness may be a result of sin in the individual, 
but it is not always so. There are many 
cases of sickness which are not to be traced 
to wailful wrong doings on the part of the 
sufferer. But sickness surely becomes the 
tool of Satan when it interferes with the ac- 
tivities of our soul. A sanctified body con- 
secrated as a living sacrifice unto the Lord 
ought by all means to be preserved a healthy 
body, normal in all its functions. Other- 
wise the work of the Spirit is directly inter- 
fered with. This statement should stand 
whether or not the general doctrine regard- 
ing divine healing is accepted as Scriptural. 
Aside from the doctrinal deliverance con- 
cerning divine healing, every honest, think- 
ing Christian must surely admit that a sanc- 
tified body should mean a healthy body. 

II. A distinct phase of the same general 
subject may next be noted in this discussion 
of the relation of the body to religion. It 
is the question of the place of spiritual dis- 
cipline in bodily disease. Here again we 
are not dealing with the subject of divine 
healing as such, and those readers who have 



The Body and Religion 83 

not yet accepted that doctrine as Scriptural 
may nevertheless find it possible to ac- 
knowledge the reasonableness of the fol- 
lowing considerations. In fact, a large pro- 
portion of those who are earnest advocates 
of divine healing, need to enlarge their view 
and see the matter of discipline in connec- 
tion with the diseases of the body as they 
have not heretofore seen it. With those who 
accept healing as their Christian privilege, 
when there is a case of illness the first and 
generally the only thought is to send for 
the elders to be anointed and to claim the 
healing. In most instances this is wrong. 
What should be done is to inquire of the 
Lord first of all what is the meaning of the 
affliction. Such inquiry may bring to pass 
the fact that the sickness has no spiritual 
meaning at all ; but it is very probable in- 
deed that if the Holy Spirit is given full 
liberty of illumination He will reveal some 
spiritual significance of the disease at hand. 
We may learn that sickness has been 
caused through carelessness and a lesson of 
caring for the body may be needed. It may 
have come because of overwork and may 
constitute a warning of the danger of great- 
er disaster. It may be present because sin 



84 Spirit, Soul and Body 

has been committed. In such case surely 
the thing to do is not to send for the elders, 
but to confess the sin, and, as in the case of 
Job, there may be a speedy restoration as 
soon as the spiritual life is made right with 
God. Or again the affliction may come in 
order to work in some deeper lesson of pa- 
tience or submission or sympathy, — some- 
thing which can not or will not be learned in 
any other way. A great many of the afflic- 
tions which come to the body of the saints 
have this as their reason. Once more, dis- 
ease may be in the body simply to give the 
believer an opportunity to conquer it by 
prayer or to offer an opportunity for the 
Lord to stretch forth His hand in healing. 
Many times the Lord surrounds us with en- 
emies not because we have done wrong and 
need to be punished, but because we need 
the new experience and added strength of 
fighting to a glorious victory. These are 
only a few of the purposes of sickness, — 
its disciplinary value is varied and great. 
If Ave are to believe the premises in the 
Word that God continually takes care of us 
and allows no dart of Satan to reach us 
without His permission, we must believe 
that all these distressing instances of pain 



The Body and Religion 85 

and disease have a purpose in the will of 
God. That purpose may not require that 
they remain permanently, — quite probably 
just the opposite. But nevertheless we are 
to learn what is their mission and are to re- 
ceive their message. The thing to do there- 
fore in case of a bodily disease is not to deal 
with it as a pure bodily disorder requiring 
simply a touch from the great Repairer, 
but we are to deal with it as a messenger 
from the Lord Himself and are to consider 
the healing of it as the item of least impor- 
tance. When the spiritual discipline is com- 
pleted the healing will come. But on the 
other hand, if in one way or another we ob- 
tain bodily relief before the lesson has been 
communicated to our soul, disease and pain 
may come again and again in an effort to 
bring us through the intended discipline. 

III. One more fact in connection with 
the diseases of the body should be consid- 
ered under the general heading of the body 
and religion. Satan has made the healing of 
the body a bait with which to ensnare the 
souls of thousands of God's children. In 
these days almost every successful relig- 
ious movement has the element of bodily 
healing in it. What would Mr. Dowie's 



86 Spirit, Soul and Body 

work have been without the healing? And 
what success would Christian Science attain 
if it did not heal the body. 

There are probably two great reasons for 
the success of Christian Science. One of 
these is that it makes it possible for man to 
live almost as he pleases without needing to 
fear the consequences of sin, — for there is 
no sin. Another reason is its achievements 
in healing mortal bodies. However this heal- 
ing may be explained — and it most assured- 
ly can be explained without referring it to 
the work of God — the fact remains that 
Christian Science is comparatively success- 
ful in physical healing. Now it is almost 
always this phase of the movement which 
appeals to people first and draws them into 
the rapidly increasing number of Christian 
Science adherents. Ask almost any Chris- 
tian Scientist how he became one and you 
will learn that either he himself was healed 
or some friend of his was healed or some 
prominent person was healed, or in some 
other way a case of seemingly genuine 
bodily healing came to his attention and 
aroused his interest and enlisted his sym- 
pathy. Christian Science approaches the 
church on its worldly side and carries away 



The Body and Religion 9>y 

the careless unconsecrated Christian pro- 
fessors by the thousand. Anyone who ac- 
tually accepts the tenets of Christian Sci- 
ence has no hope extended to him in the Bi- 
ble for eternal life; for there is certainly no 
ground at all for expecting salvation for 
those who deny so absolutely the funda- 
mental doctrines of the Word of God. This 
havoc of souls is caused through the cry of 
the body for healing. 

While Christian Science attacks the un- 
consecrated element in the church, the con- 
secrated side of the church is invaded by 
another class of workers in healing. These 
are often the religious fanatics and spiritual 
extremists who come with delightfully new 
doctrines and strange interpretations of the 
Scriptures, but almost always with a mes- 
sage for the healing of the body. And to 
these unsound teachers and irresponsible 
leaders the saints flock in great numbers. 
It is surprising how easily the saints are 
imposed upon and deceived. They are ready 
to believe almost any doctrine and to en- 
dorse almost any practice if only they see 
people healed. They will forsake the faith- 
ful leaders and the tried and true teachers, 
will leave their places of duty and respon- 



88 Spirit, Soul and Body 

sibility in the work of the Lord and will 
hand over all their money and sign over all 
their property to someone who comes along 
healing their body of pain and disease. 

It must ever be remembered that the pow- 
er to heal the body is no sign of divine ap- 
proval. There are various ways by which 
bodily disease can be removed which do not 
at all require the interposition of the Lord. 
In all lands and in all times bodies have 
been healed without the use of remedies. 
The relics of the Roman Catholic church, 
the shrines of the saints, the holy places of 
many religions, priests, medicine men and 
kings, not to speak of the great army of 
mercenaries and fakirs, — all have caused 
thousands of bodies to be healed under cir- 
cumstances which could not possibly give 
evidence of the presence of the omnipotent 
God. There is much power in the human 
body to heal itself and there is much power 
of one mind over another body, through 
natural laws, and, above all this, Satan has 
great power given unto him. When there- 
fore a man asks the saints to believe in his 
message and follow his leadership, because 
he claims to be sent of God, and attempts to 
prove his professed divine commission by 



The Body and Religion 89 

healing the sick, he is not proving anything 
at all. Thousands have healed the sick 
who have never been sent of God. It is 
alarming how men can be controlled through 
relieving their body of its disorders. Hbw 
strange that the church has not seen this, 
and that she continues pounding away on 
matters of hyper-spirituality while she re- 
ligiously neglects the needs of the body and 
refusing to recognize its place in Christian 
experience. Meanwhile Satan is fully aware 
of the importance of the body, and is mak- 
ing the most of his knowledge. He is using 
the body as a bait and is extremely success- 
ful. If the church would give the body its 
place in the sanctified life, Satan could no 
longer work such devastation in the ranks 
of the saints. 

IV. A very different phase of the relation 
of the body to religious experience is in the 
matter of fasting. Fasting has always oc- 
cupied a subordinate place in the interest of 
the church at large, but there have always 
been a goodly number of believers who 
practiced it conscientiously. In recent years 
many have come into bondage on this sub- 
ject, — a bondage which is very distressing 
to body and spirit both. The writer can 



90 Spirit, Soul and Body 

well remember when he was in school and 
was doing his best to fulfil the entire will 
of God, when the subject of fasting came 
to his mind with special power and made it 
seem necessary for him to abstain frequent- 
ly from the regular meals of the day. At 
such times he would force himself to remain 
in his room, but his mind would be with 
those who were eating and the thoughts of 
food and the distant sound of the dishes 
would make the time one long-drawn-out 
period of bodily and mental agony. The 
natural demands of the body were present, 
as was to be expected, and when they were 
not satisfied they usurped the place of prom- 
inence in his thoughts. He was unable to 
read the Word of God or to pray: he was 
forming mental images of good things to 
eat. And often during the succeeding hours 
until the next meal he was in a condition of 
faintness which rendered the best grade of 
mental exercise impossible. 

There are many others who force them- 
selves in this way to abstain from food but 
do not gain any spiritual profit thereby. 
They think however they do, because they 
are laboring under the impression that by 
denying the demands of the body they are 



The Body and Religion 91 

"crucifying the flesh," and they expect God 
will compensate them with special favor. 
But all this is legalism of the worst kind. 
God's grace is not purchased by such things 
as these. To be sure there are conditions on 
which His grace is bestowed, but these con- 
ditions have their reason in things which 
have an essential spiritual value. There is 
no spiritual value in denying the lawful 
periodic requirements of the body for nour- 
ishment. Those who in this way attempt to 
obtain the favor of God are in great bondage 
to the law. It is reasonable and right that 
our bodies be properly nourished and phys- 
iological conditions make it highly advanta- 
geous to supply this nourishment at regular 
times. 

The best time to fast is when our body is 
in such condition that abstinence from food 
enables us to continue mental or spiritual 
lines of thought. There are times when a 
Christian would give very much if he was 
not compelled by the forms of society to 
leave his quiet room and go downstairs to a 
public meal. In doing so he may break up 
a most desirable condition of mind and at- 
titude of heart. After the meal his thoughts 
are scattered, his interests are diffused, his 



92 Spirit, Soul and Body 

mind cannot work keenly because of the di- 
gestive processes, and he may not for a 
very long while get back again to that 
much-to-be-desired condition of concentra- 
tion and spiritual intensity which was bro- 
ken up by going down to the meal. The 
time to fast is when we do not care for food 
and when eating w^ould disturb us and inter- 
fere with our spiritual thinking. When we 
are attempting to fast and the thoughts of 
food usurp the chief place in our mind we 
ought far rather to eat lightly and get rid 
of the disturbing demands of the body, — 
and then we might be able to give ourselves 
to spiritual things. 

Complete deliverance from the legalistic 
bondage in this matter never came to the 
writer until he took the New Testament and 
carefully studied all it had to say on the 
subject of fasting. Then he learned that 
fasting had its value not in an ascetic de- 
nial of the lawful requirements of the body, 
but in furnishing an opportunity for a con- 
tinued predominance of spiritual interests. 
This subject like the question of dress, has 
often occupied an undue place in Christian 
thinking. Much energy has been wasted and 
lives have been sidetracked and rendered 



The Body and Religion 93 

temporarily useless or confused for lack of 
proper appreciation of the relation between 
fasting of the body and spiritual things. 



Chapter VI. 
THE BODY AND RELIGION. 

(Continued) 

V. A different and far more delicate sub- 
ject under this general heading of the body 
and religion, is the subject of demonstra- 
tions. This is dangerous ground, and one 
who attempts to speak frankly on this sub- 
ject is very likely to be excommunicated 
from one or the other portions of the 
church. For on this matter, as on many oth- 
ers, the people of God are inclined to di- 
vide by adopting opposing extremes. There 
is one class who believe that all demonstra- 
tion is of the flesh and should be avoided, 
while there is another class who insist that 
no religious experience is genuine unless 
accompanied by a manifest demonstration. 
If we ever get a full gospel prayer book this 
petition should surely be included therein, 
"From either extreme, Good Lord deliver 
us, and keep us in the middle of the road. ,, 
This petition even now should be offered 
most earnestly concerning the matter of 
demonstration, — for without doubt both ex- 



The Body and Religion 95 

tremes are wrong. Demonstration has a 
real place in religious life, but withal its 
place is subordinate. 

We must remember the relation of bodi- 
ly demonstration to mental conditions and 
spiritual states. We must remember that 
the very best the body can do is incom- 
plete, unsatisfactory and crude compared to 
the emotions within. We need to see clear- 
ly that the demonstration even though it is 
so unsatisfactory as a representative of in- 
ward conditions, nevertheless has its en- 
tire value because it is thus representative 
of those conditions. No demonstration with 
the limbs or the body, no gestures, no 
sounds, no conditions of rigidity, none of 
these things has any value at all in itself. 
The only value is in that it is expressive of 
an inward condition. The thing to be 
judged therefore is not the demonstration, 
which is very crude, but the inward condi- 
tion. Mtan looketh on the outward appear- 
ance, but the Lord searcheth the heart. 
Man desires outward activities and demon- 
strations but the Lord desires truth in the 
inward parts. If God sees the right condi- 
tion within, he is satisfied, whether it is 
accompanied by extreme demonstration or 



96 Spirit, Soul and Body 

on the other hand is not evident at all to 
those who may be looking on. 

This of course is a hard saying. It is 
hard to those at either extreme. Those who 
say that we cannot be saved without feeling 
it and that we cannot be sanctified without 
knowing it all over our body, who insist that 
every blessing will make us shout or laugh 
or leap or dance before the Lord, and that 
the greatest blessing will render our bodies 
absolutely powerless, overcome, prostrated 
by the power of God, cannot see this matter 
as above stated. They believe that when 
one loses his activity in demonstration he 
is losing his blessing, and that a fairly com- 
plete loss of public demonstration is the 
surest indication of a backslidden heart. To 
them the wonderful meetings are the meet- 
ings of great demonstration and the more 
noisy and active and varied the demonstra- 
tion, the more remarkable is the blessing of 
the Lord. To them a quiet meeting is a 
meeting of spiritual deadness in which the 
Lord has no place. To them the coming of 
the Spirit upon His people is manifested 
invariably by physical evidences which can- 
not be concealed. 

And then this is a hard saying to the 



The Body and Religion 97 

other camp. It is hard to those who believe 
that we must crucify the flesh in all its ac- 
tivity and insist upon the silence of the 
presence of God; to those who sing, "Bless- 
ed Quietness," with a physical as well as a 
spiritual significance; to those who believe 
that the Christians who make demonstra- 
tion do so to substitute bodily energy for a 
spiritual life which does not exist within. 

It is a blessed thing to see that both these 
classes of Christians may be right with God 
and both may be enjoying His blessings; 
that both of them may be earnest, honest 
and sincere, and that both will get to heav- 
en, — with slight changes. But both need to 
see that what God is seeking is a condition 
of heart and life, regardless of any irregu- 
lar physical manifestion of em'otional in- 
tensity. 

It may help us grasp the significance of 
demonstrations if we realize that they are 
often temperamental. This is very evident 
in nations. Any thoughtful person who 
could have known in advance that a great 
revival was to come to Wales would have 
predicted just such a wave of demonstrative 
experiences as actually did sweep over that 
land, for the Welsh are a demonstrative 



98 Spirit, Soul and Body 

people, like the Galatians of old. The 
French are similar in this respect and so are 
the Italians. But a great revival which 
would accomplish the same degree of spir- 
itual results, coming to Canada or England 
proper, would not be accompanied by the 
same degree of physical demonstration, be- 
cause the English are of a different tempera- 
ment. When an Italian stands on the street 
corner talking to a friend, he talks with his 
entire body and makes gestures in the course 
of an ordinary conversation on the common- 
est subject which an Englishman would 
scarcely make if he was endeavoring to 
warn his friend from imminent death. These 
national traits hold true in religious experi- 
ences as well as in everything else. It is 
no sign of double grace because a Welsh- 
man shouts twice as loud in prayer meeting 
as an Englishman, nor is it an indication of 
a specially low grade of spirituality when 
a Canadian takes his blessing so very much 
more quietly than a Frenchman. These 
things belong to the strange qualities of na- 
tional and individual temperament. 

The same rule holds true of individuals as 
of nations. Different persons may differ 
greatly in their degree of outward expres- 






The Body and Religion 99 

sion of things. There are some who can- 
not take any ordinary pleasure without a 
great amount of physical manifestations of 
delight, while there are others who quietly 
smile and that is all. There are some who 
are driven to wildness and prostration by 
trouble, while others bow their heads and 
sit in silence. Why should not these per- 
sonal differences of temperament hold in 
matters of religious experience? There is no 
question that they do. Very often the en- 
tire difference between two persons who 
profess to receive great blessings from the 
Lord, but who act very differently about the 
matter, is a difference of temperament. With 
one the emotion runs outward and mani- 
fests itself in his face, his voice, his ges- 
tures ; while with the other it strikes inward 
and burns in the quiet depths of his being 
without giving any surface indication of its 
unseen surgings. 

Some persons believe that when the Lord 
takes hold of a life He changes all these 
matters of temperament and reverses them. 
But as a matter of fact He very seldom in- 
terferes with personality. From all the ev- 
idence we gather in the Gospels, John was 
the same quiet, loving, abstract man after 



ioo Spirit, Soul and Body 

his sanctification as before, and there is very- 
little discernible difference between the ear- 
nest impetuosity of Peter after Pentecost 
and before ; his zeal ran in a different direc- 
tion but his personality and temperament 
was the same. 

What a great deliverance it would be if 
the people of God would see this, and could 
realize that demonstration has really no di- 
rect value one way or the other. If it comes 
we are not to repress it, unless it should 
force us beyond the proprieties of decency 
and good manners and should take us be- 
yond our self-control. "The spirit of the 
prophets is subject to the prophets/' and 
no demonstration which gets away with us 
is justified by the Word of God. Aside from 
these dangerous extremes we should rejoice 
in every overflow of blessing which enlists 
the activity of our body and attempts to 
work out in this way some of the fulness in 
the heart. 

But we must remember in this connection 
that great emotion may come without much 
divine dealing with the will ; that demonstra- 
tion is an emotional factor rather than a vo- 
litional one. Providing God has reached 
our will and done a real work in our heart 



The Body and Religion 101 

of hearts, let demonstration come if it will 
and let us glorify God in our bodily ac- 
tions if we are so led. On the other hand if 
we know without doubt that God has spok- 
en to our hearts and that our wills have met 
Him, let us be perfectly satisfied; even if 
no trait of outward demonstration follows. 
What God wants and all He wants is the 
right condition of heart, the proper attitude 
of will : given that, He is satisfied. 

What distress there has been over this 
matter of demonstration ! How much spir- 
itual energy has been wasted seeking waves 
of nervous ecstasy and trying to work up 
actions of unnatural physical manifesta- 
tion, while the real heart of the matter has 
been neglected. We have emphasized the 
non-essential form and have neglected the 
deeply essential inward condition. If the 
saints would but allow the Lord to deliver 
them from extreme views and disturbing 
bondage on the question of demonstration, 
and would become large hearted enough to 
rejoice with those who are demonstrative, 
and to believe in those who are not, and to 
be satisfied with themselves either way, pro- 
viding they are assured that God has hold 
of their hearts, they would then find them- 



102 Spirit, Soul and Body 

selves on a spiritual plane far above that 
occupied by the majority who seek the 
Lord's blessing. 

VI. We must glance at one more division 
of this very wide and practical subject of 
the relation of the body to religious expe- 
rience. It may be stated in this way: Bodi- 
ly conditions are very often misinterpreted 
as spiritual states and also very frequently 
control spiritual states. This particular top- 
ic is subject to so much investigation and in 
some form or other has such a direct bear- 
ing on spiritual life that one is at a loss to 
know what not to say. 

Many Christians are more trustworthy 
barometers than the little instrument we 
hang outside our doors. Gloomy weather 
outside gives rise to gloomy states of mind. 
A heavy and depressing atmosphere outside 
is indicated by a tendency toward despon- 
dency in the heart, while on the other hand 
invigorating air and bright, sunny days have 
a most excellent influence on the soul. It 
is too bad that the saints are in such bond- 
age to the weather, but it is true neverthe- 
less. We have failed to see that the weather 
affects all people alike in many things. Ev- 
erybody has a tendency to feel gloomy on 



The Body and Religion 103 

dark, drizzly days, and the worst sinner of 
all is inclined to whistle and smile when 
the sun shines brightly and birds are singing 
all around him. It is no indication of relig- 
ion to feel free and vigorous on such days, 
nor is it any indication of backsliding to 
feel mentally dull on oppressive days. 

The trouble is that we interpret these 
things as spiritual evidences while as a mat- 
ter of fact thj^ have nothing to do directly 
with our spiritual condition. But after we 
accept them as indicating spiritual facts we 
can very easily fall into the conditions of 
soul imagined, especially if it means a loss 
rather than a gain of spiritual power. Thus 
by believing that the Lord has forsaken us, 
simply because the oppression of the atmos- 
phere makes us feel stupid, we soon will 
come into a condition of soul where the 
Lord actually has been cut off from fellow- 
ship with us by our own unbelieving action 
in the matter. How often we deceive our- 
selves by thinking we are spiritually blessed 
when it is simply the uplifting effect of a 
refreshing day. Our heart has not been 
reached and our life, at bottom, may be as 
far from the will of God as ever, but we feel 
good and we think all is well. Satan is called 



104 Spirit, Soul and Body 

the god of the air, or the atmosphere, which 
may be a suggestion of how he controls the 
souls of men by influencing them through 
the everchanging conditions of the earthly 
atmosphere. The saints are surely simple 
enough to allow him to control them very 
seriously in this way and if he had no other 
access to them than through the weather 
conditions he would still have the pleasur- 
able soul experiences of most of them pretty 
well in his own hands. 

Conditions within the body likewise af- 
fect the soul. When we have been eating 
indiscreetly and have not had sufficient 
sleep to rest our nerves; when we have not 
taken enough exercise and our circulation is 
sluggish, when we are cursed with a torpid 
liver,— then there is no end to the spiritual 
conflicts we suffer, all of them likely 
enough simply misinterpretations of bodily 
conditions. All our spiritual living involves 
a conscious activity of the mind and the 
activity of the mind is conditioned by the 
body. When the body is out of order it is 
so easy to mistake the effect for the cause 
and to think that inertia in spiritual matters 
comes from diseased spiritual conditions. 
This is one reason why it is highly advisable 



The Body and Religion 105 

for the saints to be healthy and well, and 
this is one reason why we need to learn to 
eat and drink to the glory of God, and this 
is one reason why it is a religious duty to 
rest our bodies and a spiritual activity to 
take physical exercise. 

Times upon times the saints have been 
oppressed by "the devil," as they say, when 
as a matter of fact it was all in their liver. 
It may sound like a very unconservative 
statement but there is excellent ground nev- 
ertheless for believing that it is scientific- 
ally and spiritually correct to say that the 
liver causes us as much spiritual distress 
in the tips and downs of our experience as 
Satan himself. H^ does not trouble the or- 
dinary Christian very much with personal 
attention and it is a question how deep ac- 
cess his representatives have to the inner 
lives of believers: all he has to do is to 
leave us alone and through our careless liv- 
ing and heedlessness in caring for our bod- 
ies we get out of order physically; then we 
lose our faith, as we think, and lose the joy 
of the Lord as we believe, and soon conclude 
that God has forsaken us. All because we 
have indigestion or the liver complaint! 

Of course it is true that spiritual darkness 



106 Spirit, Soul and Body 

does come because God has actually been 
crowded out of our lives. It is a fine spirit- 
ual art to learn to distinguish between act- 
ual soul difficulty and the mental reflection 
of physical disorders; but it nevertheless 
remains a general truth that most of the 
spiritual fluctuations of the saints are trace- 
able to bodily conditions and mental moods. 
As a rule they have no spiritual bearing un- 
til we are foolish enough to say that they 
have and then insist upon making it real. 

If it were not so serious and pathetic it 
would be amusing to notice how completely 
most of the saints of God are subject to the 
conditions of their environment and the ac- 
tivities of their bodily frame. Some indi- 
gestible cabbage or too much proteid food 
at a meal may induce the conditions of rest- 
lessness and drowsiness which may be in- 
terpreted as a blackslidden state of the soul. 
When we fall asleep reading the Bible or 
while on our knees we must not unthinking- 
ly blame it on Satan or attribute it to spir- 
itual indifference. It may be caused by 
lack of rest or over eating. When we awaken 
in the morning and every slight duty seems 
a great burden, and every trivial irregularity 
an almost unbearable annoyance, we must 



The Body and Religion 107 

not always interpret it as a complete loss of 
our sanctification. It may be due to the fact 
that we have been exciting and exhausting 
our nerves without giving them sufficient 
opportunity to recuperate and lose their un- 
natural irritability. When we find ourselves 
inclined to criticize our brethren, to look on 
the dark side of everything and to question 
the promises of God, we must not only ac- 
cuse ourselves of lack of love and shortage 
of faith, but we must most earnestly ask 
the Lord to set our liver right, for likely 
enough the trouble is there rather than in 
our heart. All this does not mean that sins 
can be explained by bodily conditions with- 
out involving the will, but it does mean that 
for those saints whose heart of hearts is 
earnestly intent upon being right with God, 
these surface irregularites are not to be 
laid to bad conditions of soul until we are 
sure that they are not caused by bad condi- 
tions of body. 

This subject could be enlarged and ap- 
plied very much farther, but the above sug- 
gestions, based as they are upon sound 
physiology and a careful and extended ob- 
servation of actual Christian experience, 
will start us watching ourselves prayerfully. 



io8 Spirit, Soul and Body 



The first general division of this small 
volume is now ended. Throughout this sec- 
tion of the book the subject of The Body 
has been dealt with very incompletely and 
inadequately. But this subject, as a vital 
part of actual Christian experience, is giv- 
en in a new setting. Instead of following 
the well beaten roads of commonly accepted 
doctrinal opinions we have attempted to 
reach the center of our soul's need by break- 
ing some new paths. What has been said 
therefore is far from being finished and 
final. It is rather the early rough-hew r ing, 
which awaits more patient and skilful atten- 
tion. Let the preceding chapters be suggest- 
ive rather than descriptive. May they be 
used to start us thinking, praying, watch- 
ing ourselves and searching God's Word 
along the lines here indicated until we come 
to a much more nearly perfect understand- 
ing of the truth of God concerning our 
bodies in relation to our souls. 



Chapter VII. 
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MIND. 

WE come now to the second great divis- 
ion of man. The study of the human 
mind is attended by difficulties not 
found in connection with the body. The fol- 
lowing chapters avoid, as far as possible, 
theoretical and uncertain features of this 
subject and give attention to those things 
most certainly true, although in many in- 
stances it does not follow that they are 
thereby most widely known and most fre- 
quently taken into consideration. 

We shall approach this matter by con- 
sidering first why the mind is important 
and why, therefore, it should be made a sub- 
ject of prayerful study in a book like this. 

I. The mind is important, first, because 
we all think. This is not true of many 
things men do. Only some persons sing, 
only some are successful in business, only 
some are called to preach (w T hich is a mer- 
ciful dispensation), only some are married; 
and there are many other things which apply 
to only a portion of the human race. But 
we all think. No matter what else we do or 



no Spirit, Soul and Body 

what else we do not do, every person 
thinks, — at least we charitably assume so. 
Christians think and unbelievers think; rich 
people think, and poor people think; men 
and women both think; the learned and the 
ignorant all think,— in fact there is no ex- 
ception to this absolutely universal activity 
of human life. 

There are many sermons which apply to 
only a portion of the audience. A talk on 
honesty in business methods would not in- 
terest many in a congregation, a talk on 
household felicity would appeal especially 
to only a few, an exhortation to sing would 
be met by just a portion of the hearers, but 
a sermon on the mind applies to every liv- 
ing human being within the range of the 
preacher's voice, — for they all think. How 
important then is this subject, one which ap- 
plies to every reader of this book without 
any possible exception. There are very few 
subjects which have an immediate and un- 
questioned application to any and every pos- 
sible hearer or reader. Of these few the 
Mind is one. 

II. The mind is important, in the next 
place, because we think all of the time. From 
the first moment of consciousness in the 



The Importance of the Mind 1 1 1 

morning throughout the entire day until 
we fall asleep at night we are constantly 
thinking: if we awaken for a few minutes 
during the night we immediately fall to 
thinking again and keep it up until we go 
to sleep once more. The only way to es- 
cape from thinking is to escape from con- 
sciousness and responsibility. The loss of 
consciousness really deprives us of sensation 
and ideation for the time being and in one 
sense we may be said to be not living men- 
tally just then. At such times we do not 
think and in such conditions we are not re- 
sponsible beings. At all other times, how- 
ever, we are constantly engaged in thinking. 
Suppose someone decides to spend half an 
hour absolutely without sinning. He says, I 
will not sin with my feet, so he binds his 
feet and cannot sin with them. He says, I 
will not sin with my hands, so he ties them 
behind his back, and does not sin with 
them. He decides he will not sin with his 
ears, and fills them with wax so that he 
cannot hear anything. He determines not 
to sin w r ith his eyes, and he blindfolds him- 
self and cannot see anything. He makes 
up his mind he will enjoy the rare experience 
of not sinning for half an hour with his 



ii2 Spirit, Soul and Body 

tongue, so he succeeds in gagging himself 
beyond the power of speech. Then he set- 
tles back to enjoy a few minutes of com- 
plete sinlessness, for he can do no wrong of 
any kind with his feet, his hands, his ears, 
his eyes, or even with his tongue. But all 
the time his busy mind goes on thinking 
and sinning, — if it be to sin — without a stop. 
To bind the body does not bind the mind. 
To make it physically impossible for the 
tody to do wrong does not in any wise re- 
strict the activities of the mind to do wrong. 
Though his body be tied and plugged and 
blinded and gagged, his mind keeps working 
away thinking, thinking, thinking, and sin- 
ning, sinning, the same as if the body was 
free. What an awful thing is the power of 
mind, and how important is the mind in our 
everyday life and our spiritual life! 

III. We not only all think, and we not 
only think all of the time, but we think of 
all things, although of course not simulta- 
neously. The ordinary limitations of space, 
which are so binding upon the activities of 
the body, do not apply to the mind. The 
body can act in one place only at one time, 
and if it wishes to act in a distant place it 
may be a long while before it can reach that 



The Importance of the Mind 113 

place. But the mind travels with the swift- 
ness of thought and leaps from place to 
place and lives in one land and then in an- 
other, and roams from one house in one city 
to another house in a far distant city, and 
calls up one set of companions one second 
and an entirely different and separated set 
the next second, — all regardless of the lim- 
itations of space. Space means very little 
to the mind, it roams at large and lives 
where it will, — and sins where it will. 

The mind is similarly unrestricted by the 
limitations of time. The body is bound 
firmly to the present and can act only in 
the present. What is past has gone forever, 
so far as the body is concerned, and what 
is future can in no wise be anticipated in the 
body. It can act only in the ever-flowing 
Now. But not so with the mind. The mind 
goes back into the past and by active recol- 
lection calls up again the experiences that 
have gone forever so far as the body is con- 
cerned, and lives over many times, often 
with a vividness equaling the original expe- 
rience, the doing of the past. It digs up the 
things that should have been buried forever, 
and again and again goes through the expe- 
riences which, even in memory, cause the 



H4 Spirit, Soul and Body 

emotions to stir with anger or fear or pleas- 
ure. It lives over once and again the for- 
bidden experiences which have once actual- 
ly occurred in the past and so multiplies 
them to a corresponding increase of their 
guilt. 

And then the mind pushes forward into 
the future, totally regardless of the restric- 
tions of the past and the binding powers of 
the present. It lays plans for months ahead 
and builds its air castles, lives in its dreams, 
and has a most satisfying life all within itself 
and belonging to the fanciful days of the fu- 
ture. Thousands of experiences of the mind 
projected into the future are never carried 
out in actual experience; yet they are al- 
most as real to the inner life as though the 
body itself had engaged in them. Thus does 
the mind defy the forms of space and time 
in which all the experiences of the body are 
cast and wanders at will to live anywhere, 
in any time. In this sense it may be said 
we think of all things. Is this not an impor- 
tant part of our being which is active in all 
of us and is active in all of us all of the 
time and is active in all of us all of the time 
and concerning all things? 

IV. The mind is important moreover be- 



The Importance of the Mind 115 

cause it is so easy to sin with the mind as 
compared to sinning with the body. This 
arises out of the facts already considered. 
We can sin so easily with the mind because 
we can sin so rapidly with the mind. The 
movement of thought is a thousand times 
more rapid than the movement of the body; 
it flies with the speed of light from place to 
place and from time to time. We can sin 
with the mind more easily than with the 
body because the consequences are seem- 
ingly lighter. A sin in the mind need not di- 
rectly affect anyone else, while a sin with 
the body is very likely to. 

We can sin with the mind, again, more 
easily than with the body because a sin in 
the mind need not be known to anyone 
else. If we strike a man with our fist it 
becomes public. If we steal with our hands 
or lie with our tongues sooner or later others 
know of it and we lose reputation accord- 
ingly, but we may sin the most heinous sin 
with our mind and no one may be aware of 
it. While we sit under the preaching of the 
Word of God our minds may be sinning. 
While we bend our knees in prayer or look 
kindly into the eyes of a friend, our mind 
may be full of thoughts of sin and no one 



n6 Spirit, Soul and Body 

suspects it. We may maintain the most 
unblemished outward record while inwardly 
our minds are poisoned with frequent secret 
thoughts of sin. 

Unless one carefully watches his own ex- 
perience in this respect he does not realize 
how terribly easy it is to sin with the mind, 
and what an enormous amount of guilt ac- 
cumulates on the soul through mental sins 
which we would not dare and sometimes 
would not care to carry into effect in the 
body. If anyone questions the fact that sins 
in the mind bring guilt to the soul, let him 
read the fifth chapter of Matthew, particu- 
larly verses 27 and 28, where Jesus, using a 
concrete case as an example, lays down the 
principle that although the sin in the mind 
ma)' not have the same outward effects upon 
others which follow a sin in the body, yet 
nevertheless the same degree of guilt falls 
upon the soul for a mental sin as for a bodily 
sin. 

V. The mind is important because 
thoughts help form character and indicate 
character. Proverbs xxiii. 7 tells us, "As he 
thinketh in his heart so is he." Not as he 
stands before the congregation to preach, 
nor as he rises in the public meeting to tes- 



The Importance of the Mind 117 

tify ; not as he prays when others are listen- 
ing or walks on parade when the world is 
watching; not as he bows and smiles in the 
activities of society, or talks to his friends ; 
not as he dresses his body or controls his 
gait as he marches down the street, — but as 
he thinketh in his HEART so is he. 

Very often the man in the heart is an en- 
tirely different man from the one the world 
knows and often there is a great discrepancy 
between the man of the heart and the man 
known to his best friend. How easy it is to 
think that because we can deceive the world 
by appearing one thing while in reality we 
are another, that we are also deceiving God. 
In fact many people deceive themselves in 
this matter and really come to think that 
they are what the world says they are, for- 
getting that God says they are just as they 
think in their hearts. The man inside is the 
real man, and the thoughts make up a very 
large proportion of this man inside. It is 
not the man who acts like a servant who is 
necessarily humble, but the man who has 
humble thoughts. If we fully realize that the 
thoughts of the heart determined our real 
standing before God and indicated our actu- 



n8 Spirit, Soul and Body 

al character we would seek more earnestly 
for the mind to be sanctified. 

VI. The mind is important because the 
thoughts will be judged. I. Cor. iv. 5: 
"Judge nothing before the time, until the 
Lord come, who both will bring to light 
the hidden things of darkness and will make 
manifest the counsels of the heart." This 
penetrating verse reminds us of the almost 
unwelcome fact that the thoughts of our 
mind as well as the deeds of our body are 
to be judged at the coming of the Lord. 
There are various other New Testament 
verses, such for instance as II. Cor. v. 10, 
which tell us that the deeds of the body 
are to come into judgment. This verse 
warns us that the hidden things of the mind, 
the unknown plans, the forbidden pleasures, 
the unworthy ideals and the untrue motives 
which no one on earth has known but our- 
selves, will be brought to light before the 
judgment seat of Christ. 

This does not mean, undoubtedly, the 
thoughts belonging to the old life before we 
were saved. They, with all the other sin- 
ful records, have been washed away for- 
ever, if we are truly the Lord's. Nor does 
this mean that the judgment of our thoughts 



The Importance of the Mind 119 

at the Lord's coming is to determine the 
question of our salvation. That is settled 
for eternity when we truly receive the Lord 
Jesus Christ as our Saviour. This is not to 
be a judgment as to salvation or damnation, 
heaven or hell ; but it is a judgment of works 
for reward. We find the general principles 
of the judgment indicated in I. Cor. iii. 11 
to 15. There we learn that even though 
our deeds and thoughts are found unworthy, 
we ourselves shall be saved, so as by fire, 
but we shall lose much reward. 

It is to be hoped that this judgment will 
be absolutely private between every soul 
and Christ. It is quite reasonable to be- 
lieve that this will be so, for why should 
the Lord make public to others in that day, 
the hidden wickedness of our thoughts which 
had never been known to others on earth? 
But to have all these forbidden and forgot- 
ten thoughts brought to light and face us in 
His holy presence will be awful enough, 
even though no one else knows of them. 

The doctrine of the judgment of the 
saints at Christ's second coming, and par- 
ticularly the part of it which warns us that 
our thoughts and motives are to be judged, 
is one of the most serious messages of the 



120 Spirit, Soul and Body 

New Testament to the Church of God. How 
important is this mind of ours and how nec- 
essary that it be sanctified, when all its hid- 
den activities are to be revealed before the 
Lord Jesus at His coming! 

VII. The mind is important moreover be- 
cause all the truth of God is received in the 
mind and held by the mind. This, in its 
bare statement, may seem unscriptural and 
unspiritual, but as a matter of fact it is both 
Scriptural and spiritual and correct scien- 
tifically. 

One day the great teacher was walking 
with two of His disciples to a place called 
Emmaus. He knew all truth and, being 
God, He had all power so that He could im- 
part truth in any way He wished; and more- 
over, being God, He knew all things so that 
He had a perfect understanding of the con- 
dition of the minds of the two disciples with 
whom He was walking, which is a point of 
advantage possessed by no human teacher. 
And now He wishes to teach them some 
things concerning Himself. And what does 
He do? "Then opened He their under- 
standing, that they might understand the 
Scriptures ,, (Luke xxiv. 45). Even Christ, 
though He was GoH, could not teach the 



The Importance of the Miind 121 

disciples without opening their understand- 
ing, which means, of course, their minds. 
He had to touch their minds, for Hie had to 
put His message in their minds. It does not 
say He moved their emotions or influenced 
their souls or opened their hearts, but it does 
say He dealt with their understanding. 

To be sure, it is very common for Chris- 
tians to say the Lord teaches them in their 
hearts, but this is only one of the many 
ways in which the word "heart" is used 
when those who use it do not clearly under- 
stand what they mean by it. What is this 
"heart" we talk so much about in testimony 
meetings and write so much about in relig- 
ious books? It surely cannot mean the phys- 
ical organ located in our breast, and what it 
does mean, probably not one Christian in a 
thousand really comprehends. In the latter 
part of this book we shall attempt to find 
what light the Scripture throws on this ex- 
pression. For the present it is sufficient for 
us to know that Jesus opened their under- 
standing. 

Whatever we believe about God we hold 
in our understanding. If we know the plan 
of salvation and know that Christ has died 
for us, we know it in our minds or else we do 



122 Spirit, Soul and Body 

not know it at all. Anyone who will think 
carefully and who knows how r to think ex- 
actly, will see in a moment that all we know 
must be known in our minds. If we know 
that Christ is coming again, if we know the 
Bible is the Word of God, if we know that 
eternal life is the gift of God, if we know 
that love is the nature of God, we know it 
in our understanding. Every time w r e trust, 
during distress, in the love of God, we do 
so because our understanding has grasped 
the fact that God is love. 

This does not mean that we can explain 
all these things, and it surely does not 
mean that all these things can be fully un- 
derstood and appreciated, through the 
teaching of man. No number of volumes 
on dogmatic theology, no amount of in- 
struction from human teachers, no degree 
of mental effort in our own strength, can 
bring us to know fully and appreciate the 
things of the Word of God. The Holy 
Spirit Himself must be the Master Teacher, 
using all these other means for His pur- 
pose, but adding to them something which 
they themselves do not contain. And yet, 
when He teaches us, He teaches our under- 
standing as Jesus did. 



The Importance of the Mind 123 

If the Church of God had just one Sunday 
morning in which the understanding of all 
its members was quickened by the Spirit 
to understand the Scriptures, that would be 
the most wonderful day the church has ever 
known. The truth would be so plain, it 
would go so deep, it would be so forceful 
and remain forever. It matters little how 
earnest and how orthodox the preacher is, 
if those to whom he preaches do not have 
their understandings opened to understand 
the Scriptures. The sanctification of the 
mind is therefore most highly to be desired 
because only as we hold the truth of God in 
our minds do we hold it at all. 

VIII. The mind is important, finally, be- 
cause the mind determines our pleasure or 
displeasure in an experience much more 
than the external incident does itself. This 
subject is mentioned with reluctance lest it 
should be misunderstood, but a careful con- 
sideration of the matter will surely prove 
to every one that it is not the environment 
which determines our pleasure or displeas- 
ure, but our attitude toward it. Pleasure 
belongs to the realm of the mind rather 
than the objective world. This is not Chris- 
tian Science. If one runs into a stone wall, 



124 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Christian Science says he did not do it at 
all, for the stone wall was not there. We do 
not deny the existence of the objective 
world: these things are all there. But we 
do insist upon the truth that it is not the 
things themselves, but our attitude toward 
them which determines our enjoyment or 
distress as we come into contact with them. 

A piece of cheap candy may be offered to 
a little fellow who has spent his few un- 
happy years in poverty, and may cause him 
great delight. A piece of the very same kind 
of candy may be offered to a child of the 
rich and may cause him to cry in disgust 
and anger at the insult. In both cases the 
candy was the same, but the attitude of 
mind in the two boys was quite different. 
As a result one boy was filled with delight 
and another with disgust, all because their 
minds viewed the candy in different ways. 

There are times when a certain condition 
of weather makes one man rejoice and an- 
other complain because of their different in- 
terests affected by the weather and their 
different views concerning the value of the 
weather. The weather is the same, but 
their minds concerning the weather are 



The Importance of the Mind 125 

quite different and so one rejoices while the 
other is downcast. 

Two persons may sit in church under the 
same sermon. One may be annoyed and 
tortured by it while the other may be great- 
ly uplifted. The difference is not in the 
sermon, for that is the same ; not in their 
powders of hearing, for they both have good 
auditory organs ; not in the comfort of their 
body, for they both sit in pews cushioned 
alike, — and yet one is wondering when the 
preacher will stop while the other is hoping 
that he will not stop for several hours. 
What does make the difference? Evidently 
each one's condition of mind. 

Not only does the same thing appeal very 
differently to different persons, but the 
same thing appeals very differently to the 
same person at different times, as we all 
may easily learn in our own experience. It 
is a great thing to discover that the way 
our mind grasps an objective circumstance 
is the real determining factor of our emo- 
tion toward that circumstance, sometimes 
quite regardless of the nature of the cir- 
cumstance itself. 

A man may be informed over the 'phone 
that he has a relative as a visitor in his 



126 Spirit, Soul and Body 

home. For various reasons he may be 
greatly displeased at the news and may 
chafe all day over the incident, greatly 
dreading to go home in the evening. It 
may transpire after he gets home that the 
relative has brought him a very costly and 
greatly desired gift, which he himself has 
been unable to purchase for himself, though 
often wishing to do so. Immediately his 
condition of displeasure changes to one of 
pleasure, all because his mind grasps the 
significance of the relative's visit in a new 
light. The relative has not changed, the 
visit has not come to an end, but the mind 
sees things dififerently. 

A person who may be informed that some 
great calamity has happened to a member 
of his family, will have emotions of great 
distress. If later he is told that the infor- 
mation was incorrect, it does not in any 
wise do away with the reality of those feel- 
ings of distress he has already experienced. 
The facts show that they were entirely un- 
grounded, but he did not understand it that 
way and his distress was real. 

The story is often told of a poor woman 
expecting her landlord to call upon her for 
the rent which she did not have the money 



The Importance of the Mind 127 

to pay, who, when she heard a knocking at 
the door hid herself in a closet and did not 
let the visitor in, expecting it was the land- 
lord for his bill. On the following day she 
learned to her dismay that the unwelcomed 
visitor was none other than her pastor with 
money in his hand to help her pay her rent. 
The objective fact was that a friend with 
help was at the door, but her mind regard- 
ed the matter differently and consequently 
she spent several minutes of great fear, and 
was in bodily as well as mental distress. It 
made no difference that the pastor was wait- 
ing to be admitted, her mind thought other- 
wise and so she trembled and grew pale. 

These various examples serve to bring to 
light the very important principle now un- 
der consideration, namely, that it is not the 
circumstance which makes us unhappy, but 
our attitude toward it. If our minds were 
controlled by the Holy Spirit so that we al- 
ways saw everything in the light of God's 
love, and with the understanding that all 
was under His care, life would be very dif- 
ferent to us. Many of our troubles are in 
our mind, many of them never materialize 
and those which do are often much less se- 



128 Spirit, Soul and Body 

vere and much briefer than the mental dis- 
tress we have brought upon ourselves in 
worrying about them. 

As a matter of fact God never sends His 
children any trials and never will. He sends 
the circumstance, our own minds make it 
either a trial or a blessing. If our minds are 
in the power of the evil one, or are con- 
trolled by our own selfish nature, we see 
the dark side of the circumstance and call 
it a divine visitation, an affliction of provi- 
dence, and awful trial. If our minds are 
purified and quickened by the uplifting Spir- 
it of God we see the bright side of the cir- 
cumstance and call it an opportunity for 
strengthening ourselves, another occasion 
for winning a great victory, a special bless- 
ing from the Lord. Cannot everyone see 
what all this would mean if it were fol- 
lowed out in every day life and if the mind 
were truly controlled by the Holy Spirit. 

The significance of this one principle of 
the mental life is much wider and deeper 
than we dare indicate at present. Let the 
children of God carefully think about it 
while they put it to the test, and see if it is 
not true that they can make practically any 
circumstance of life a dark or a bright time 



The Importance of the Mind 129 

according as they regard it in their minds. 
Of course in order to do this we need a di- 
vine quickening in our mlental nature for 
no human effort can produce this result. 
We may talk all we please about optimism 
and join as many "Keep Cheerful" clubs as 
we wish, and use all the latent native good 
cheer of our own nature, but with it all we 
cannot see the glory side until our minds 
are quickened by the Spirit of God Him- 
self, and our intellects are truly sanctified. 



Chapter VIII. 
THE SINS OF THE MIND. 

FROM the long list of sins of the mind 
we will consider just a few which are 
representative of the various classes. 

I. Corrupt and evil thoughts. In these 
days when a spirit of lasciviousness has un- 
dermined society and is creeping even into 
the Church of God, corrupting the course of 
life in almost every form of human activity, 
we all need to guard most prayerfully 
against the prevalence of this evil in our 
thoughts. It is so easy to think impure 
thoughts because they can be indulged in 
the mind without any activity on the part 
of the body, and when everything but the 
person himself is entirely ignorant of their 
presence. The complete secrecy with which 
this line of bad thinking can be carried on 
makes it a great temptation and there are 
many who would not commit deeds or utter 
words, but who entertain to a very serious 
extent the thoughts concerning these for- 
bidden things. 

We have already noticed the fact that 
in the fifth chapter of Matthew, verses 27 
and 28, Jesus, using a special case, tells 



The Sins of the Mind 131 

us distinctly that the thought of evil brings 
as much guilt upon a person as the bod- 
ily committing of the deed. The conse- 
quences to others are not the same, but per- 
sonal stain of sin is as deep. While we 
cannot prevent these forbidden thoughts 
from suggesting themselves, we can at least 
refuse to entertain them. He who does en- 
tertain them, though his outward life be 
pure and proper, is corrupt and sinful in the 
sight of God. Even if he is engaged in the 
Lord's work, if his mind is the dwelling- 
place or the occasional visiting place of for- 
bidden thoughts he is not clean before the 
Lord. 

II. Thoughts of Pride. Romans xii. 3 ex- 
horts "Every man that is among you, not 
to think of himself more highly than he 
ought to think." It is interesting to note 
that this verse does not so much forbid a 
Christian strutting around like a peacock 
and displaying all his good points, — the or- 
dinary conventionalities of society warn one 
against such a pompous parade. Nor does 
it especially forbid one to be constantly 
speaking about himself, boasting of his own 
merits, — the finer instincts of everyone who 
has been properly brought up prevent such 



132 Spirit, Soul and Body 

rudeness. The verse warns of something 
deeper and more subtle, namely of thinking 
proud thoughts. 

There are many who would not for a mo- 
ment consider strutting around and who 
have too good taste to boast continually of 
themselves, but in their own minds they are 
full of self-conceit, vain glory, and an im- 
pressive sense of their own worth. They 
are constantly sympathizing with them- 
selves and consoling themselves because 
men have not recognized their merits. They 
dwell sweetly upon their own accomplish- 
ments and are persuaded in their minds 
that they are right in every thing and are of 
great value to the activities in which they 
take part. They are proud in heart, if not 
in outward life ; in fact, in outward life they 
may be very humble, they may bow and 
scrape and smile and be the servant of ev- 
eryone, and at the same time be exceedingly 
proud of that trait. They may be puffed 
up in mind over the fact that their brethren 
talk so much about their humility. 

The sixth chapter of Esther tells us of 
the day when the king called Haman and 
asked him what should be done to the man 
whom the king delighted to honor. We read 



The Sins of the Mind 133 

there that Hainan "thought in his heart," 
To whom would the king delight to do 
greater honor than to myself? So Haman 
devised the most elaborate procession for 
himself. He was to be robed with a king's 
robe, crowned with the king's crown, seated 
on the king's horse and announced by the 
king's messenger until all the city should 
know that Haman was the man whom the 
king delighted to honor. When the king 
heartily accepted Hainan's suggestion as to 
the method of procedure, and then told him 
that he, Haman, should do all this to Mor- 
decai the Jew who sat at the king's gate, 
Haman went out in an agony of selfishness, 
and very soon after that we read that he 
was hanging by a rope, dead. 

It does not pay to think of ourselves more 
highly than we ought to think. Inward 
pride is so much subtler than the outward 
manifestation of it that many who assure 
themselves that they are truly humble, are 
continually offending the Holy Spirit and 
weakening their own service by harboring 
the boldest thoughts of selfish pride. 

III. Another one of the sins of the mind is 
Doubt. Many consider doubt as a sin of 
the heart, but this raises the question again, 



134 Spirit, Soul and Body 

What is the heart? Whatever the heart may 
be, there is no doubt that unbelief has a 
prominent activity in the mind. 

In Luke xxiv. 38, Jesus asked them, 
"Why are ye troubled and why do thoughts 
arise in your hearts ?" Their doubt and dis- 
trust was either caused by or accompanied 
by a certain kind of thoughts arising in their 
hearts. As a matter of fact, doubt has its 
basis in the mind in the sense that at times 
of doubt our minds are not absolutely per- 
suaded of the truth of God's Word. If we 
were perfectly sure that the Word of God 
is true, as true as we are that the person 
who signs his name to a check is honest, 
there would be no longer any doubt. We 
lack mental conviction in the matter. Our 
minds are not perfectly assured. 

Now this assurance cannot come through 
human logic pr the arguments and teachings 
of men; but although coming by the en- 
lightening of the Holy Spirit, it neverthe- 
less has its basis in the intellect. If our in- 
tellects accept absolutely the statement of 
God's Word we believe that statement, but 
the things we doubt are the things concern- 
ing which our intellect is not persuaded. If 
the Holy Spirit would but touch our minds 



The Sins of the Mind 135 

and convince them beyond question of all 
the truth of the Word of God, we would en- 
joy the delightful experience of living day 
after day in the constant exercise of unhesi- 
tating faith. It may be hard to see this 
point, but it is unquestionably a truth; the 
conviction of the mind as to the truth of 
God's Word is at the basis of faith, and the 
absence of this mental certainty from the 
Holy Spirit means doubt. 

IV. Worry is a most common sin of the 
mind. Jesus rebukes it in Luke xii. 29, say- 
ing, "Seek not ye what ye shall eat nor 
what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubt- 
ful mind," — margin, "Live not in careful 
suspense. " Here again we are met by the 
common statement that worry is caused by 
a heart out of order spiritually, — a state- 
ment which means nothing very definite 
to most people because they do not know 
just what they are speaking about when they 
use the word Heart in a spiritual sense. 

Whatever may be the fundamental cause 
for worry it is difficult to trace it farther 
back than an unsanctified imagination. This 
seems to be what worry really is. The 
imagination is that mental faculty by which 
we live in other climes and conditions than 



136 Spirit, Soul and Body 

those immediately present ; and worry is the 
picturing in the mind of conditions not pres- 
ent, or consequences which have not yet ap- 
peared. When one worries, he imagines evil 
things happening to him. He sees in his 
mind great sorrow or suffering, he lives 
through a long and remarkably vivid list of 
unhappy experiences, going over the same 
exquisite ground again and again in his 
imagination, dwelling fondly upon the de- 
tails of the agony. Very few people have 
not at some time imagined themselves dy- 
ing and dead, or have not attended their 
own funerals, — in imagination. Every time 
threatening indications appear, we immedi- 
ately set to work to conjure up all the pos- 
sible evils the indications may foreshadow. 
The marvel is that God does not allow to 
come upon us all the terrible things we de- 
liberately call up in imagination concern- 
ing ourselves. If He sent us one fourth of 
the trouble we experience in our minds, our 
condition would be most pitiable. Surely 
we could hardly blame Him for sending it 
all upon us since we so persistently hold to 
it in thought. How fortunate in this respect 
must be the condition of the horse and the 
dog and the lower animals, in whom the 



The Sins of the Mind 137 

faculty of imagination is probably absent! 
All their troubles are real. 

The story has been told of two elderly 
maiden ladies who once were found by their 
pastor weeping as though their hearts were 
broken. When the good man sought to 
learn the cause of their distress that he 
might minister comfort to them, they told 
him between their sobs that they had sat 
down and were talking and thinking what 
if one of them was married, and what if this 
one had a dear little child, and what if that 
little child sat on the window sill one day, 
and what if that little child had fallen out 
the window and killed itself — and at this 
point their sobbing became uncontrollable 
again, and the embarrassed pastor was al- 
lowed to make his exit without being 
thanked for his kindly intentions. 

There are not many who go to such ex- 
tremes in exactly this direction, but there 
are very few of the Lord's people who do 
not get into as deep mental distress over 
imaginary troubles which are as far from 
the actual facts as these. If only our mind 
was sanctified and our imagination con- 
trolled by the Hloly Spirit, worry would have 
no place in our lives; for we would refuse 



138 Spirit, Soul and Body 

to live in the things which had not yet hap- 
pened and probably never would happen. On 
the other hand, our imagination would be- 
come the channel for active faith, which is 
in fact spiritual imagination, — seeing the 
things that are invisible, and counting those 
things which be not as though they were. 
Oh, how greatly we need to have our imag- 
ination made over anew by the Spirit of 
Christ ! 

y. Erring judgments form a very serious 
class of the sins of the mind. Many people 
do not realize that their whole life is one 
practically unbroken series of decisions, or 
judgments, From the first thing in the 
morning till the last at night they are choos- 
ing. They decide at what time to arise, they 
decide what to eat for breakfast, along which 
street to walk to work, — and so on through- 
out the day. 

Some days bring need for decisions of 
recognized seriousness. Business invest- 
ments, questions of character, and some- 
times even problems of the soul have to be 
decided. All recognize that such times are 
moments of great importance, and that upon 
the decisions then made, great issues de- 
pend. 



The Sins of the Mind 139 

But we have no way of knowing how 
many of the decisions in matters we call 
trivial, are also of great importance. To 
walk down one street rather than another 
may mean that we shall meet someone and 
converse with him and say something which 
will greatly hurt or injure him in his own 
life; or it may mean that someone passing 
by shall simply notice our face and receive 
an inspiration and a message in a time of 
critical despair. The letters we write, the 
simple words we speak, and even the very 
tones of our voice may be most important 
at times, for they may give impressions 
which lead to results of great meaning. We 
do not realize how many times during the 
ordinary course of the common day we are 
making decisions as to what word we shall 
utter or what step we shall take, or what 
spirit we shall manifest, which have an al- 
most eternal bearing upon our interests or 
those of others. 

In the view of all this, and in the light 
of the fact that our own unaided judgment 
is not equal to this because we do not know 
the future or understand the significance of 
the present, how necessary it is that our 
mind be governed in its judgments by the 



140 Spirit, Soul and Body 

wisdom of God. To Him all these things 
are known, and to Him alone. 

We cannot expect however that the Holy 
Spirit will guide us in matters of judgment, 
whether we ourselves recognize them as im- 
portant or whether they are deeply impor- 
tant without our being aware of the fact, un- 
less we make it our habit of life to keep our 
minds in His hands. We cannot fill our 
minds with selfish and sinful things for the 
larger part of the time and expect the Holy 
Spirit to give us a sure guidance in our de- 
cisions. Otir minds must be cleansed from 
defilement and made sensitive to the slight- 
est guidance of the Spirit of God and to the 
most delicate influences of His own omnis- 
cience. To neglect this is sinful. 

VI. Dulness of apprehension in spiritual 
things is another most distressing evidence 
of mental sinfulness. How strange it is that 
we realize the value of bargains in business 
and are sensitive to the proprieties of socie- 
ty, and are aroused by the danger to which 
our bodies are sometimes exposed, but in 
matters of spiritual instruction we are so 
dull of understanding! 

In Mfatthew xvi. verses 9 to 11, Jesus re- 
bukes His disciples for their little faith and 



The Sins of the Mind 141 

their lack of spiritual apprehension. He had 
referred to leaven, and they thought He was 
reproving them because they had brought 
no bread and all were in danger of going 
hungry. But He said, "Do ye not yet un- 
derstand neither remember the five loaves 
and the five thousand, and how many bas- 
kets ye took up? neither the seven loaves 
and the four thousand and how many bas- 
kets ye took up? How is it that ye do not 
understand ?" 

This pathetic statement from Christ ap- 
plies to us to-day as truly as it did to the 
disciples then. Although He knew all that 
was in man, yet even He seemed to be as- 
tounded at the depth of their dulness. He 
could not understand why they had for- 
gotten the wonderful lesson of the two mir- 
acles and why they were so quick to be wor- 
ried and frightened at the prospect of a 
shortage of bread. But it is so with us to- 
day. He teaches us the same lesson over 
and over again and we never learn. Almost 
all we hear from the pulpit is a repetition of 
principles we have repeatedly heard in the 
past; but we still need them and enjoy 
them. 

To be sure, there are times when in the 



142 Spirit, Soul and Body 

flush of joy over some recent marked an- 
swer to prayer, we are unwise enough to 
exclaim, "I shall never doubt God again," 
and this holds all right until we have an- 
other opportunity to believe Him. Then 
almost without exception we doubt Him 
again just as we have habitually done in the 
past. We seem to forget so easily what He 
has taught us. 

Nor does His Word come to us with that 
living power with which it should. We 
read about heaven and hell and are not 
moved, we read of the gracious promises to 
those who are the Lord's and they do not 
appeal to us. We are far more disturbed 
over the danger of losing a piece of prop- 
erty than we are over the probability of los- 
ing an eternal crown. The things of God 
do not take hold of us as do the things of 
earth. We become enthusiastic over poli- 
tics, business and society, but in the things 
of heaven we are indifferent. Our souls 
seem so stupid. We are careless and cal- 
lous to an alarming degree. We have lost 
our sensitiveness to the keen force of the 
Word of God. Our spiritual apprehension 
is seared as with a red hot iron. 

If, as has been suggested, there could be 



The Sins of the Mind 143 

a day when for just one hour the members 
of only one congregation could sit under a 
sermon from the Scriptures with their intel- 
lects divinely quickened the truth would 
stand out so clearly, would penetrate so 
deeply and burn in the heart so mightily 
that the lives would be transformed through 
that one experience probably more than 
through all the past long-drawn-out labors 
towards spiritual perfection. These people 
would become so noted for their divine 
quickening, that the entire Christian world 
would soon hear of it. 

If only the minds of all hearers were 
quickened by God as the Word is preached 
to them it would have an incalculable ef- 
fect. It is not alone the orthodoxy and 
truth of the message, nor alone the godli- 
ness and zeal of the messenger that deter- 
mines the effect of the message, but even 
more the mental condition of the hearers to 
receive the message. Without the sancti- 
fying power of the Spirit of God, we are ex- 
ceedingly dull of apprehension ; but with 
this wonderful mental quickening the Scrip- 
tures become many times as luminous and 
many times as effective. 

VII, We are often led into sinful states 



144 Spirit, Soul and Body 

of mind by the host of troublesome thoughts 
which beat in upon us when they are least 
wanted. When one sits down to read God's 
Word or to meditate therein, or kneels to 
pray it is generally the signal for the be- 
ginning of a mind-wandering which is not 
indulged in during any other part of the 
day's experience; it is the beginning of an 
attack by hundreds of little demon thoughts 
and suggestions springing up from all quar- 
ters and swarming into the mind through 
all its windows, until the purpose of one's 
meditation is entirely forgotten, and the 
work of the day or the experiences of yes- 
terday usurp the place of the worship of 
God. These experiences are very common 
to the saints and are among the most annoy- 
ing of all. 

We must not judge ourselves too severe- 
ly, however, because of them. We may not 
be responsible for their coming, in the sense 
that we have not deliberately called them 
up, but we are nevertheless largely respon- 
sible for them because we have failed to give 
our minds to the Lord to be wholly sancti- 
fied and strengthened against such distress- 
ing thoughts. If the Spirit of God com- 
pletely controls the mind of a Christian 



The Sins of the Mtind 145 

there will be a most wonderful cessation of 
such thoughts, and the Christian will then 
be able to concentrate his attention on the 
things of God and hold it there undisturbed. 
This can not be brought about by any self 
mental training or by any power of our own 
will, it must be produced by the work of the 
Holy Spirit, who, in a way known only to 
Himself, will shield us from these little de- 
mons and hold our minds steadily on the 
Lord. 

VIII. Criticising in our thoughts is a com- 
mon sin of the mind. It is not considered 
polite or according to good bringing up to 
criticise our friends publicly too frequently 
or too severely, but this still leaves it possi- 
ble to criticise them very seriously in our 
minds. 

We have a striking example of the evil of 
this in the first chapter of Samuel. There 
we find Hannah praying for a son. As she 
prays in the depths of her spirit, her lips 
move unconsciously and old Eli who sits 
by the temple watching her, thinks she is a 
lewd woman. We read in the 13th verse, 
"Now Hannah she spake in her heart, only 
her lips moved, but her voice was not heard : 
therefore Eli thought she had been drunk- 



146 Spirit, Soul and Body 

en." And what an awful mistake he made ! 
Here was a woman who was in the very 
holiest in all, standing right in the presence 
of Jehovah with an agony of prayer which 
following events proved was accepted of 
Him. And with all this Eli looked upon 
her and thought she was just recovering 
from a night of debauchery. 

We read Eli "thought" — that was just 
the trouble. He only thought so ; and how 
mistaken he was ! But no more mistaken 
than are we many, many times, when Ave 
think critical thoughts about others. We 
have no basis for our criticism, and we 
have no right to criticise. There are cir- 
cumstances unknown to us which often 
make a great difference. There are the 
factors of past bringing up and experience, 
and there is above all, the motive in each 
case, — none of which are fully known to us. 
In fact there is no person living who com- 
pletely knows another person's mind, and 
because of that there is no person living who 
has a right to judge another person, except 
in the most open and unquestioned wrong, 
and even then we are safer not to judge at 
all. Love thinketh no evil, because with the 
right kind of Divine love there is a sanctified 



The Sins of the MSnd 147 

mind in which such thoughts are not permit- 
ted to dwell. A great portion of the strifes 
and dissensions which have torn apart the 
Church of God have begun because some- 
one thought that someone else intended to 
do him or her a wrong, and then the thing 
has been passed on from mouth to mouth, 
until great damage has resulted. It grew 
through the use of unsanctified tongues, but 
it originated in an unsanctified mind. We 
only think that people intended to do so and 
so. We only think they are selfish or proud 
or wilful, we only think they intended to 
harm us — we have no absolute knowledge. 
If we would permit the Spirit Himself to 
take charge of our minds He would drive 
?.way from them all these evil and critical 
thoughts, and the attitude of mind which 
characterizes Christ would become our at- 
titude. We would look at everything and 
everyone cheerfully, forgivingly and lov- 
ingly. What a difference this would make 
in cur lives ! 

There are many other sins common to the 
mind, but these eight classes must serve 
to suggest some of them to us. This list, 
short as it is, should be enough to awaken 



148 Spirit, Soul and Body 

us to the fact that we are in constant danger 
of sinning in some way with our minds, and 
that we very, very frequently actually com- 
mit these sins. 

It now becomes necessary for us to look 
farther into the Scriptures on this subject 
and see if God has made any provision at 
all definite for the redemption of the mind 
from this most distressing condition. We 
shall find that He has. If we had to stop 
here, after realizing the great role played in 
our daily life by the mind, and after glanc- 
ing down into its native corruption and real- 
izing with intensified force its propensity 
to do wrong, our condition would be abso- 
lutely hopeless. But although the church 
as a whole seems not yet to have discov- 
ered it, there is in the Word of God a com- 
plete plan of redemption for the mind and 
we shall see that it is our duty and privi- 
lege to be fully sanctified in mind as well 
as in spirit. Surely there can be no doubt 
that it is more necessary to be sanctified in 
our minds than in our bodies. Shall we now 
inquire into this most important matter a 
little farther? 



Chapter IX. 
THE REDEMPTION OF THE MIND. 

THIS is the most important topic of all 
in our study of the mind. For what 
benefit is it to learn how important a 
place the mind occupies in actual life and 
what good does it do to discover how many 
are the sins of the mind, if there is no reme- 
dy possible? It is with deep gratitude to God 
that we discover what complete provision 
He has made for the entire redemption of 
the intellect as well as of the spirit and the 
body. Briefly expressed, the statement is 
this : Man's present mental condition is due 
to the fall ; the atonement of Christ com- 
pletely covers the effects of the fall; there- 
fore Christ's atonement includes the mind. 
In support of the two premises of this prop- 
osition, let us note the following Scriptural 
facts. 

I. First premise: The present condition 
of man's mind is due to the fall. This is 
proved by three statements. 

i. Adam's mind as originally given by 
God was far superior to the present human 



150 Spirit, Soul and Body 

mind. We have practically conclusive sup- 
port of this in the following items. 

(a) According to Genesis ii. 7, God breath- 
ed into Adam "the breath of lives" — for the 
original gives the plural form of the word 
life. This must mean that Adam's mental 
life as well as physical life was God- 
breathed. It is impossible to believe that 
the present corrupt and deformed mind of 
the human race could be God-breathed. 
Surely the mind imparted to Adam directly 
by the Creator must have been better than 
the mind we now possess. 

(b) Adam was created in the image of 
God. This obviously was not a corporeal 
image, for God has no fixed bodily form. 
The likeness without doubt belonged to the 
mental and moral spheres. If Adam's men- 
tal life was in the image of the mind of God 
it must of necessity have been decidedly su- 
perior to the mental life now characteristic 
of human beings. 

(c) The second chapter of Genesis tells 
us of that remarkable mental accomplish- 
ment on the part of Adam when he named 
all the animals which were brought before 
him by the Lord. We must remember that 
this was an entirely new experience to him. 



The Redemption of the Mind 151 

He had never seen these animals or any ani- 
mal before. He had not studied zoology, 
or done research work in comparative anat- 
omy. He had no text-books of science, no 
dictionaries, no encyclopaedias to assist him. 
So far as previous learning on the subject 
extended Adam had absolutely none at all. 
And yet when this long list of animals was 
brought before him, he intuitively grasped 
their nature and gave them fitting names. 
His names were undoubtedly not a chance 
concoction of syllables and meaningless 
sounds, but were as all inspired names, sig- 
nificant of the nature and expressive of the 
position in life of those bearing the name. 
The most learned zoologist of to-day, sup- 
ported as he is by years of experience and 
volumes of texts on this subject, could not 
begin to do what Adam' did without any 
preparation. This also goes to indicate that 
Adam's mind was superior. 

(d) In the naming of Eve Adam likewise 
showed his remarkable mental powers. He 
had never seen or heard of a woman before, 
and yet as soon as he saw her he seemed to 
know all about her, where she had come 
from, what was to be her relation to him, 
and what place woman was to occupy in 



152 Spirit, Soul and Body 

the life of the human family. He stated it 
all immediately and accurately without any 
previous information on the subject, — be- 
cause his mind was able to grasp these 
truths intuitively. 

(e) Adam was a companion of God, walk- 
ing and talking with Jehovah. The human 
mind as it is to-day offers no fit compan- 
ionship for God. So limited in its scope, 
so feeble in its grasp, and so corrupt in its 
force, it surely would not qualify one to con- 
verse with the Almighty. But Adam's mind 
was equal to this Divine companionship, for 
Adam's mind was superior. 

(f) After all of God's creation is finished, 
including the mind of man, He pronounced 
it 'Very good." Could God say that of the 
human mind at present? Far from it. A 
mind which God could pronounce very good 
must without question have been a greater 
and a nobler mind than this natural inher- 
itance of fallen man. 

These facts taken together furnish quite 
satisfactory evidence that Adam's mind be- 
fore his fall was a mind of a higher power 
than any natural mind known to the suc- 
ceeding history of man. 

2. There was a direct temptation of Satan 



The Redemption of the Mind 153 

to the mind. This is indicated in Gen- 
esis iii, 5, 6, where he said to Eve that if she 
ate of the forbidden tree, her eyes would 
be opened and she would be as God, "know- 
ing good and evil." This was a direct ap- 
peal to her mental life, for "knowing good 
and evil" can apply immediately to no part 
of man but his intellect. There were three 
considerations which induced Eve to sin. 
The first was that the tree was good for food ; 
this was the physical appeal. The second 
was that it was pleasant to the eyes; this 
was the aesthetic appeal ; the third and evi- 
dently the deciding consideration was that 
it was "a tree to be desired to make one 
wise." There is no escaping the fact that 
the appeal to her intellect was deeply felt by 
her and was one of the chief reasons why 
she yielded to the temptation. This state- 
ment that the mind was tempted and yield- 
ed to the temptation is an important link in 
our chain of proof leading to the conclusion 
that man's present mental condition is due 
to the fall. 

3. An early result of the fall of man and 
its effect upon his mental life is indicated 
in Genesis vi. 5 : "God saw that the wicked- 
ness of man was great in the earth and that 



154 Spirit, Soul and Body 

every imagination of the thoughts of his 
heart was only evil continually." Here is 
indicated a prominent mental factor in 
man's degeneration; notice the two mental 
words, "imagination" and "thoughts." 

Putting now these three things together, 
— first, that man's original mind was supe- 
rior to the present mind; second, that the 
mind was particularly involved in the temp- 
tation and in the yielding to it; and third, 
that the mind was a most prominent indica- 
tion of man's degeneration after the fall, we 
have excellent grounds for believing that the 
premises is established, and consequently 
that it is a Scriptural and a scientific fact 
that the present degraded condition of the 
mind is caused by the fall of man. 

II. Second premise: The atonement of 
Christ covers completely the effects of the 
fall of man. This statement need hardly 
be elucidated for those who believe the 
Scriptures, while for those who do not ac- 
cept them, it of course cannot be proved, 
for it is preeminently a Scriptural statement. 
Such verses as I. John iii. 8, which tells us 
that "For this purpose the Son of God was 
manifested that He might destroy the works 
of the devil," and Romans v. 20, where we 



The Redemption of the Mind 155 

read, that "where sin abounded grace did 
much more abound/' are quite sufficient to 
remind the Christian of the many other 
statements in the Word of God to this same 
effect. The fifth chapter of Romans is an 
elaboration in glorious, overwhelming de- 
tail of this doctrine, reminding us that wher- 
ever sin has gone the atonement has extend- 
ed. We may without further discussion 
consider this premise as proved, taking the 
Scriptures for our authority. 

III. Conclusion: If man's present men- 
tal condition is due to the Fall, and If 
Christ's Atonement covers all the effects of 
the Fall, Therefore the redemption of the 
mind of man is provided for by the atone- 
ment. This of course depends upon the two 
premises already laid down. If they are cor- 
rect, and we have the best of reasons for be- 
lieving that they are, this conclusion follows 
by the simplest laws of the logical syllo- 
gism. 

It may be said in further expansion of this 
conclusion, that there are at least two facts 
contributory to the same end. 

1. Without doubt the spiritual part of man 
is covered by the atonement ; and a great 
many Christians find the best Scriptural rea- 



156 Spirit, Soul and Body 

sons for believing that man's body is cov- 
ered by the atonement. This being so, by 
analogy we would be forced to believe that 
the mind, which occupies a position some- 
what intermediate between the spirit and 
the body, but which is far more important 
than the body inasmuch as it takes hold of 
eternal life while the body does not, — would 
also be covered by this comprehensive 
atonement work of Christ. 

2. We have a brief but suggestive glimpse 
of the future of the mind from the 13th 
chapter of I. Corinthians. There we read, 
"Now we see through a glass darkly, but 
then face to face: now I know in part but 
then shall I know even as I am also known" 
(verse 12). A day is to come, according to 
this Scripture, when our minds shall be so 
quickened that we shall comprehend the 
things of the universe clearly and shall know 
intuitively and completely, as we are now 
known. This day has not yet arrived, but 
awaits us in the future. Inasmuch as it is 
generally accepted that all the blessings of 
the future are a result of the purchasing 
power of Christ's atonement we have in this 
promise an additional reason for believing 
that the atonement includes the mind. 



The Redemption of the Mind 157 

IV. To many the matter would now be 
considered as proved and concluded ; but 
one possible fallacy remains. It is not 
enough to learn that a certain blessing is 
provided by the atonement; if we would 
enjoy that blessing in this life, we must 
also ascertain whether that particular por- 
tion of the atonement privilege is accessible 
in this life. All that shall ever come to us 
from God, both in this life and in the life to 
come, is through the atonement. With- 
out that atonement there could be no bless- 
ing to man, probably not even a sinful con- 
tinuance of physical life. All the endless 
years of heaven will be filled with glories 
which are purchased by the atonement. 
Without doubt, by far the larger proportion 
of what is in the atonement is to be expe- 
rienced in the life to come. 

It is not enough therefore to prove that a 
blessing is in the atonement to assure us 
that this particular blessing may not be in- 
cluded in the large proportion of atonement 
privileges which are to be experienced only 
in the life to come. Absolute sinlessness, 
for instance, is ours through the atonement, 
but it is to be ours in fullness only in the 
future life. Again, a condition of body not 



158 Spirit, Soul and Body 

subject to weariness is purchased by the 
atonement, but will not be enjoyed in this 
life. Further, the resurrection body com- 
plete is in the atonement for us, but we are 
not to experience it until the beginning of 
the next dispensation. 

How may it be now concerning the re- 
demption of the mind? And it might be 
added parenthetically, How may it be con- 
cerning the healing of the body? A great 
many who believe in divine healing think 
that the question is settled entirely if they 
can prove that healing is in the atonement, 
but this by itself in no wise makes it cer- 
tain that healing is a present day possibility. 
It may be one of those atonement blessings 
which belong to the next life. Fortunately 
we have abundant evidence in the Scriptures 
that healing is for us in this very dispensa- 
tion. The same is true of redemption for 
the mind. 

We come to this conclusion and escape 
this possible fallacy by noting the repeated 
promises of the New Testament for men- 
tal redemption here and now. If our minds 
were to be redeemed only in the next life, 
these promises for the present life would not 
be there. But their unquestionable direct- 



The Redemption of the Mind 159 

ness and their large number destroy the last 
possible doubt on the subject and assure us 
absolutely of the privilege of redeemed 
minds in this dispensation. 

The best thing to do is to take up some 
of these promises and look at them. 

Col. ii. 3 : In Christ "are hid all the treas- 
ures of wisdom and knowledge." Both these 
words, wisdom and knowledge, pertain to 
the mental life and we find that the treas- 
ures of these mental activities are stored in 
Christ for us. 

Col. iii. 3 : "Set your mind on things 
above, not on things on the earth" (mar- 
gin). This cannot be done without the 
quickening power of the H'ply Spirit and 
the command becomes a promise for the 
grace needed to carry it into effect. 

Ephesians iv. 23 : "Be renewed in the 
spirit of your mind." It is encouraging to 
notice how often references to the mind and 
its transformation are found in the Word 
of God. Here we are exhorted to a renewed 
mind. 

Hebrews viii. 10: God declares that in 
the second covenant He will put His laws 
into the minds of His people. This surely 
indicates a Divine dealing with the mind. 



x6o Spirit, Soul and Body 

I. Corinthians i. 30: "Christ Jesus, who 
of God is made unto us wisdom." And wis- 
dom belongs to the mental life. 

Romans xii. 2: "Be not conformed to 
this world, but be ye transformed by the re- 
newing of your minds." In a previous chap- 
ter attention was called to the fact that Ro- 
mans xii. 1 does not refer directly to the 
spirit, as most preachers attempt to make 
it, but is an exhortation concerning the 
body, — "present your bodies." We now see 
that Romans xii. 2 also avoids a direct ref- 
erence to the spirit and deals with the mind, 
— "the renewing of your mind." It is in- 
teresting to note that these first two verses 
of the second great division, the practical 
half, of the book of Romans, have to do 
with the body and with the mind respective- 
ly. We have strangely overlooked the fact 
that this transformation and the proving of 
the perfect and acceptable will of God are 
essentially associated with the renewing of 
our minds. 

II. Timothy ii. 7, is a verse which ought 
to be impressed upon all the people of God 
of to-day. "Consider what I say and the 
Lord give thee understanding in all things." 
The prayer here is not for emotion or expe- 



The Redemption of the Mind 161 

rience, which are the usual objects of de- 
sire on the part of the church, but for under- 
standing, which means a mental grasp of 
the things involved. What a blessed thing 
it would be if, along with their feelings and 
their experiences, the people of the Lord 
were granted Divine understanding in all 
things! This would be the redemption of 
the mind. 

I, Thessalonians v. 23, which we have al- 
ready noticed, is one of the strongest pas- 
sages of Scripture for the redemption of the 
mind. Here it is grouped with the body 
and the spirit as one of the objects of the 
Holy Spirit's work. It is to be sanctified 
wholly and preserved blameless. These 
wonderful expressions are almost incredible 
concerning the mind, but it is God's Word 
and we must dare to believe it. "Faithful 
is He that calleth you who also will do it." 

I. Corinthians ii. 16: "But we have the 
mind of Christ." This means not only His 
disposition, but all Hiis inner life including 
His mental life. This pure and strong men- 
tal life of Christ is for our minds just as 
His bodily life is for our bodies and His spir- 
itual life for our spirits. The whole Christ 
is for the whole man. 



1 62 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Philippians iv. 7: "The peace of God 
which passeth all understanding, shall keep 
your hearts and minds through Christ Je- 
sus." It is to be noticed here how the mind 
is particularly mentioned in addition to the 
heart. There can be no escape from the 
meaning of this verse which teaches that 
this wonderful peace is to control our 
thoughts and all the activities of our minds 
as truly as it may pervade our spiritual life. 
The following verse indicates the things we 
are to think on, — things that are true, hon- 
est, just, pure, and lovely. Only a mind 
kept by the perfect peace of God and re- 
deemed by the power of Christ can think 
habitually on these things. 

II. Timothy i. 7 : "God hath not given us 
the spirit of'fear, but of power and of love, 
and of a sound mind/' This is one of the 
most definite promises of the Scripture con- 
cerning the redemption of the mind, for it 
tells us that the Holy Spirit is, among oth- 
er things, the Spirit of a sound mind. The 
church deals very much in the first two 
words of this promise, love and power, but 
very little in the clause promising a sound 
mind. Love is known throughout the 



The Redemption of the Mind 163 

church, it is one of the commonest words 
of the Christian vocabulary, sermons are 
preached on it by the hundred, and al- 
most every prayer includes some reference 
to it. Power also is commonly mentioned 
among the people of God ; especially in the 
last few years an ever-increasing number of 
the saints are speaking much of power and 
praying much for power. They sing, "Oh, 
Lord, send the power just now," they spend 
nights praying for power and declare that 
they must have power if it costs them ev- 
erything. The burden of their cry is power, 
power, power. 

These things may be right in their place, 
but why have we given them places of such 
prominence while we have quite completely 
neglected the third and co-equal statement 
of this Scripture, — "a sound mind"? Love 
without a sound mind is liable to go to all 
extremes. It is zeal without knowledge, 
emotion without judgment. And power 
without a sound mind is absolutely danger- 
ous. It is a cause for thanksgiving that God 
seldom hears the prayers of His people 
when they make power their greatest de- 
sire, They may get experiences which they 



164 Spirit, Soul and Body 

think are power, but as a matter of fact they 
receive very little of the pure power of the 
Lord. Such power without a sound mind 
would bring disaster to them. They would 
be unable to control themselves, they would 
be like an engine at full speed running 
loose without an engineer at the throttle. 
It is not only because both love and power 
are comparatively useless without a sound 
mind that it is wrong for the church to tear 
apart this verse, but also because the pas- 
sage puts the three on an equal footing as 
characteristics of the work of the Holy 
Spirit. We venture to say that to-day the 
Lord's people need the spirit of a sound 
mind, good judgment, sanctified sense, as 
much as they need the heights of love and 
much more than they need great power. 

II. Corinthians x. 5 : Here we find the 
conquest of the mind promised and de- 
scribed as though it were the taking of a 
castle. The besiegers first break down the 
outer defenses and drive the defenders 
within the fortress, — and we have "Casting 
down imaginations/' And then the success- 
ful invaders, by pushing hard the fight, 
break through the inner doors, scale the in- 



The Redemption of the Mind 165 

ner walls and overcome the defenders with- 
in the castle courts. So the fortress itself 
is captured and is theirs ; then we have 
"Casting down imaginations and every high 
thing that exalteth itself against the knowl- 
edge of God." But this is not enough, the 
victorious host press in through the passage 
and pursue the surviving members of the 
garrison through the halls into the lower 
passages and the dark rooms and the dis- 
tant corners of the castle until they find 
them and slay them, not ceasing until the 
last man of the conquered company is dead ; 
and then we have "Bringing into captivity 
every thought to the obedience of Christ." 
Every thought, — what a wonderful state- 
ment ! Not a man left to defy the con- 
querors. It seems almost beyond belief that 
the power of the Lord can so control our 
minds as not only to cast down imaginations 
and the high things which war against our 
knowledge of God, but also to pursue and 
conquer every thought until our entire men- 
tal activities are controlled by Christ. But 
this is the promise, and we are to accept it. 
Other Scriptures might be added to this 
list, but these, from the various books of 
the New Testament, are sufficient to indi- 



166 Spirit, Soul and Body 

cate to us how frequent are the references 
to the mind and how repeated are the prom- 
ises of its redemption. After this survey 
there can remain no possible doubt that God 
is able and God is willing to grant us won- 
derful redemption for the mind, even in this 
life. 

V. Before leaving this subject it may be 
profitable to glance at some of the Scrip- 
tural directions for actually experiencing 
this promised redemption. There are a num- 
ber which are particularly applicable and 
mark out a course for us to pursue if we 
would be sanctified in mind. 

i. Psalm cxxxix. 23: "Search me, O God 
* * * and know my thoughts/' The first 
thing to do is to pray most honestly that 
God may turn Hlis searchlight on our lives 
and show us our thoughts. We do not real- 
ize how constantly we are sinning in our 
minds and how unholy and selfish is the 
course of our mental life. We do not real- 
ize our need of redemption; so we should 
first of all be searched by God and be made 
known to ourselves. No one but the Holy 
Spirit can reveal to us the depth and the 
extent of our mental unhoTiness. Before we 
go farther shall we not stop just now and 



The Redemption of the Mind 167 

pray from the deepest depths of our soul the 
inspired prayer of this Scripture? 

2. Psalm cxix. 113: "I hate vain 
thoughts." After God has revealed to us 
our condition of mind, we need to come to 
that attitude of will which takes the stand 
against these thoughts, repudiates them, 
disowns them, hates them as sin, for they 
are sin. We cannot expect the Lord to de- 
liver us from them if we love them and 
cherish them. 

3. Acts viii. 22 : "Repent therefore of this 
thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the 
thought of thine heart may be forgiven 
thee." We are to deal with unholy thoughts 
just as we deal with other forms of sin; 
we are to repent of them and bring them to 
God for forgiveness. No day should be 
closed without presenting Him our minds 
that they may be cleansed by the blood and 
the thoughts of our hearts be forgiven. We 
cannot impress too deeply upon ourselves 
the necessity of applying the cleansing blood 
of Jesus to our mental activities. There is 
need for forgiveness here more than in many 
other portions of our life. 

4. Isaiah lv. 7: "Let the wicked forsake 
his way and the unrighteous man his 



1 68 Spirit, Sou! and Body 

thoughts." This follows from true repent- 
ance which is, as the little boy said, not 
only being sorry for sin, but "being sorry 
enough to quit." We cannot hold to our 
thoughts and expect the Lord to tear them 
from us in spite of ourselves. We must, as 
it were, cut them off and throw them from 
us. Not that we are able to cleanse our- 
selves by our own power, but we are never- 
theless required of the Lord to do all we 
can towards this cleansing. It is signifi- 
cant that the New Testament freely urges 
us to cleanse ourselves. This does not mean 
that the Holy Spirit and the blood have no 
part in our cleansing, but it indicates that 
they do the deepest inward cleansing only 
after we have done what is in our power and 
have put these things from us by fixing our 
face like a flint against them and for the 
Lord. 

5. Matthew xv. 19: "Out of the heart 
proceed evil thoughts." This verse teaches 
us the necessity of having our hearts right 
and pure. We are not to understand that 
every suggested thought springs from im- 
purity in our heart, but if our hearts are 
clean there will not be a continuous flow 
of evil thoughts, to say the least. One of 



The Redemption of the Mind 169 

the best ways to work at the mind is to go 
deeper than the mind and have our inner- 
most spirit permeated by the holy presence 
of God. Then our thoughts will quite nat- 
urally be ordered aright. 

6. Proverbs xvi. 3 : "Commit thy works 
unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be es- 
tablished." This comforting verse covers 
many experiences in our lives. If we would 
learn what the New Testament has to say 
about the committed life and would put it 
into daily practice, we would find the 
thoughts of worry, fear and doubt leaving 
us. Complete committal of our work, what- 
ever it may be, to the Lord should bring de- 
liverance from troubling thoughts about that 
work. This of itself is a glorious emancipa- 
tion. 

7. With all this we are to claim God's 
promises. Many of these promises have al- 
ready been quoted. We are to understand 
that this is our purchased possession and 
this land is ours. All we need to do is to set 
the sole of our foot upon it and we shall then 
not only inherit it but actually possess it. 

We should enter into a transaction with 
God concerning our mind as definite as that 
concerning our soul's salvation or the heal- 



170 Spirit, Soul and Body 

ing of our body. It should be a crisis hour 
with us, one that should not need to be re- 
peated. From that day on there should be 
a distinct understanding that up to the very 
limit of our power our minds, in all their 
variety of work, are the Lord's. 

And then we should not only ask, but 
claim our inheritance and should dare to in- 
sist upon the actual working out within us 
of what is held forth in the promises. We 
should take it on the authority of God's 
Word and maintain it through darkness and 
light, failure and success just the same. We 
should conquer this land as Joshua con- 
quered Canaan, — by marching right in in 
the name of the Lord and taking posses- 
sion. We then would find, that as with 
Joshua so with us, the Lord destroys the 
enemies. In such ways as these may we be 
led by the Word and by the Spirit to the 
wonderful experience of a redeemed mind. 



Chapter X. 

THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE 
WILL. 

"What wilt thou that I shall do unto 
thee?" (Luke xviii. 41.) 

THE subject of the will does not occu- 
py the place of importance in Chris- 
tian experience which it should be- 
cause its position in the human soul is not 
recognized. We are continually confusing 
other things with the will and overlooking 
the peculiar place and power of the will it- 
self. It is necessary therefore to differenti- 
ate clearly between the will and a number 
of other factors which enter into life and 
Christian experience. Let us attempt this. 
I. Compulsory action is not volitional ac- 
tion. If a person is seized by other persons 
and compelled bodily to go some place 
where he does not wish to go, his will is 
not to be held accountable for this act. If 
there should be physical or environmental 
conditions which practically compel a cer- 
tain action, although the person himself 
wishes and wills to do otherwise, this action 
should not be laid to the account of his will. 



172 Spirit, Soul and Body 

This does not mean, however, that we are 
to excuse our irregularities by saying we 
were forced into them. There are very few 
cases where the will is absolutely overpow- 
ered by outward force: but occasionally 
such may arise. 

II. The overcoming power of habit is not 
to be taken for attitude of the will. There 
are some habits which through voluntary 
action gradually become so deeply ingrained 
in our lives that without the grace of God 
assisting us we are unable to resist them 
always when we will. Under the force of 
sudden circumstances we might do a deed 
or utter a word which would no sooner be 
committed than regretted. The accumulated 
inertia of the previous life would thus break 
forth suddenly upon us, taking us by sur- 
prise, and cause us to do what we did not 
at all choose to do. This should not be re- 
garded as a deliberate act of the will. 

We do not mean by this that we are free 
from all blame in the matter. The power 
of the Spirit of God can destroy these old 
habits completely and establish a new sys- 
tem of habits, thus making us partakers of 
the Divine nature. However we need to see 
that there may possibly arise occasions when 






The Sanctification of the Will 173 

an exceptional slip is actually committed 
that should not be counted as indicative as 
the real choice of our will, or representa- 
tive of the essential inner life. 

III. We need to distinguish right thinking 
from right willing. It is possible to have a 
theology which is correct and at the same 
time a will which is depraved. We may be 
versed in all the doctrines of the Bible and 
may be well acquainted with the text of the 
Bible, being able to dispute and even in- 
struct in these things. We may be ortho- 
dox in our theology and full-gospel in our 
testimony, subscribing to all the fulness 
of the larger life promised by the Scriptures. 
And yet with all this there may be hidden 
sin in our lives and frequent practices en- 
tered into at the bidding of the will which 
are wrong in the sight of God. It is very 
necessary to think correctly, but right doc- 
trine is not enough in itself. There must 
by all means be right willing going along 
with it. 

IV. We need to distinguish between right 
acting and right willing. It is possible for 
one to carry forward a line of action with 
which his deepest motives are entirely out 
of harmony. He may act a part and be a 



174 Spirit, Soul and Body 

hypocrite. He may make himself appear to 
others different from what he really is. He 
may do the most commendable things for 
motives which are unworthy of a Christian. 
Under these circumstances it is necessary to 
see clearly that it is not only a question of 
doing right in the sight of man, but having 
our heart and will right, as God counts 
right. 

V. We need to distinguish between good 
desires and right willing. To desire is not 
to will, although desire generally prepares 
the way for an action of the will. As a rule 
will follows the line indicated by desire, but 
not necessarily and not always. There are 
many Christians who when they have been 
granted desires for the things of God, feed 
upon those desires without taking any step 
of the will at all. The desire may be very 
deep and intense, it may cause them to weep 
and pray and spend much time at the altar ; 
but this desire may all work itself out and 
still the will may not have acted at all. The 
desire is good in its place but no degree of 
intense and holy desire can bring us nearer 
God if we stop with the desire. There must 
be an action of the will. 

VI. We need to distinguish between right 






The Sanctification of the Will 175 

feeling and right willing. Here again a 
great many of the Lord's people are con- 
tinually being deceived. To feel good does 
not necessarily mean that our wills are right. 
There are times when on a bright, dry day 
with his constitution in excellent condition, 
the worst sinner in the country feels good; 
but this does not mean that his will is right 
with God. And there are times when on 
dark, muggy days, especially with a disor- 
dered digestive system, the best saint in the 
land may feel very much depressed ; but this 
does not necessarily indicate that his will 
is not true to God. 

Feelings come and feelings go, but the 
will should remain fixed regardless of them 
all. And yet we are so much the slaves of 
our present state of emotions that when we 
feel good we are inclined to be thoroughly 
satisfied and when our feelings are not on 
the hilltop we refuse to believe that the Lord 
is just as near as He ever was. There is a 
place for emotion in the Christian experience 
which we shall see, but it is not the place 
of predominance. That should be occupied 
by the will. It is one thing to feel jubilant 
and it is quite another thing to have our 
wills set firmly to do the will of God. The 



176 Spirit, Soul and Body 

sooner we learn to distinguish between 
these two inner experiences the better it will 
be for the steadiness and satisfaction of our 
Christian life and our relations with the 
Lord. 

What then is the will ? We might say that 
the will is that part of our being which acts, 
which carries things into effect, which de- 
cides matters finally and brings about the 
determined action, — but this is describing 
what the will does rather than telling what 
the will is. The will is as near the center 
of man as we can get. Man is not located 
in his clothes, although many people seem 
to think that the clothes make the man. Nor 
is man's soul located in his skin nor in his 
bones or muscles: it is not located in any 
part of his body. As we try to trace it down 
we have to leap from the body to the imma- 
terial division before we find any real hu- 
man being. In this spiritual part of man we 
search through the intellect to find man, 
and we find much of him; but nevertheless 
there is much which we do not find in his 
thoughts. We explore the emotions and find 
more of man ; but there still remains some 
undiscovered portion. 

Not until we come to the will do we find 



The Sanctification of the Will 177 

the real center of man. The will is more than 
anything else his heart of hearts, his inner 
self, his real Ego. When we say "I" we 
mean the will as we mean no other part of 
our being. The will is I myself, not my 
thoughts nor my feelings, and surely not my 
body. It is the very center of my person- 
ality : what the will does I do. If we can 
grasp this position of the will in relation to 
the other parts of man material and imma- 
terial it will deeply impress us with the ne- 
cessity of having the will, above all other 
divisions, completely in the hands of the 
Spirit of the Lord. 

The Scripture at the head of this chap- 
ter, as well as an abundance of other Scrip- 
tures, teaches us that in dealing with man 
the Lord deals with us through our wills and 
not through our thoughts, desires or emo- 
tions. He takes cognizance of these other 
activities of the soul, but when He addresses 
us personally, He addresses the will ; and 
when He expects an aswer from our true 
selves Hie expects the answer from the will. 
In all the stages of Christian experience and 
in all the varieties of Divine transactions 
with the human soul God deals with the 
will. We shall see this more clearly as we 



178 Spirit, Soul and Body 

attempt to emphasize the part of the will 
in various experiences of the Christian life. 

Let it be borne in mind however that 
this entire division of the subject is not in- 
tended to magnify the power of man's will 
in dealing with himself and his environments 
but rather is intended to reveal the supreme 
importance of the will in man's dealing with 
God. This is not the popular message of 
the day, "Will to be good and you will be 
good" : this is the message of Christ to the 
blind man, "What wilt thou that I shall do 
unto thee?" 

We notice here that Christ appeals to the 
man's will. He does not ask him what his 
theology is, what are his desires, or how he 
is feeling; He asks him what he wills. And 
notice again that Christ does not ask this 
man what the man wills to make himself, but 
asks him what he wills that Christ shall do 
for him. The power is the Lord's, but the 
attitude of will which either binds that 
power or frees it to work in us is ours. We 
are to will toward God ancl God is to work 
in us. 

Let us now review the chief phases of 
Christian experience and see how the Scrip- 
tures emphasize the fact that in them all 



The Sanctification of the Will 179 

God deals with us directly through our 
wills. 

I. In salvation God deals with the Will. 
It is very instructive to see how often the 
Scriptures having to do with salvation indi- 
cate that the will is the final decisive fac- 
tor. We sometimes think that salvation 
rests entirely with God, but such is not the 
entire truth. God has done his part in pro- 
viding complete salvation and in offering it 
to us irrespective of persons and absolutely 
free of cost. The reason why men are not 
saved is no longer because God has some- 
thing more to do, but because the men them- 
selves will not do what God expects them 
to do. 

What his thing is which man must do is 
revealed by various Scriptures. For instance 
Revelation xxii. 17, " Whosoever will, let 
him tatee the water of life freely." The 
word "will" which is found in this verse 
and in the various other passages we shall 
proceed to quote in these chapters on The 
Will is not simply the future tense of the 
verb to be but is a separate Greek verb 
(theleo) meaning to will or to determine. 
These verses therefore indicate not simple 
probability and futurity, but a special act 



180 Spirit, Soul and Body 

of determination. From the passage just 
quoted we learn that whosoever wills to do 
so, may take the water of life freely. 

Matthew xvi. 24 is to the same effect. 
"If any man will come after Me, let him 
deny himself and take up his cross and fol- 
low Me." The way to become a disciple of 
Jesus is not to desire it only, but as Christ 
Himself says, to "will to come after Me." 

One of the plainest passages on this point 
is John v. 39, 40: "Ye search the Scriptures, 
for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and 
they are they which testify of Me. And ye 
will not come to Me that ye might have 
life." Here Jesus acknowledges that these 
Jews searched the Scriptures (See Revised 
Version). Their failure to come to Him 
therefore and receive life, is not due to a 
neglect of the oracles of God. Nor is it due, 
we may safely infer, to any ignorance of the 
doctrines of those oracles. They read the 
Old Testament and know its teachings : 
their theology was all right for their day. 
Why then were they not saved? We find 
it in this expression, "Ye will not come to 
Me that ye might have life"; which means, 
"You do not will to come to Me." 

It appears then that the chief reason why 



The Sanctification of the Will 181 

men are not saved is because they do not 
will to come to the Lord. They may desire 
to come, they think about coming, they may 
have commendable views on the doctrines 
involved, but with all this, if their wills 
do not definitely act toward Christ for sal- 
vation they can never have eternal life. 

In Acts xxvi., Acts xxiv. and Mark x., we 
find respectively three men who, so far as 
the record goes, approached eternal life, but 
did not receive it, — Agrippa, Felix and the 
rich young ruler. We read that Agrippa 
thought about these things, Felix feared, and 
the young man desired, but none of these 
steps and experiences brought any one to 
actual salvation. Our intellects and our 
emotions are not enough, we must act in 
our wills and choose Christ from the depths 
of our beings. 

There are many persons unsaved who 
really wish to be saved, but they are wait- 
ing for some great feeling to possess them 
and carry them into the kingdom of God 
on its currents. Or they are waiting for 
some remarkable demonstration to be man- 
ifested in them as an evidence of God's 
favor extended to them. Or they are wait- 
ing to learn more perfectly the steps and 



1 82 Spirit, Soul and Body 

processes of the way of life. All these hon- 
est and earnest men and women need to 
learn that salvation is not a matter of think- 
ing or feeling or demonstration, but a sim- 
ple determinate step of the will towards the 
Lord Jesus Christ and submission of their 
lives by the will to him as their master. If 
we wait for feeling until we are saved, we 
should probably never be saved. 

And yet there are many who have strange 
experiences and unusual feelings and who 
think thereby that they are the Lord's. As 
a matter of fact in many instances their 
wills have never acknowledged Christ as 
Master or believed in Him as Saviour and 
they are still unregenerate. Their condi- 
tion is most precarious because they are 
self deceived, thinking they are all right, 
when in truth they have never yet found 
the Lord. In the matter of salvation as in 
all the other experiences of the Christian 
life there is great need in these days of get- 
ting down to rock bottom and learning that 
God deals with us through our wills. 

It will be profitable to trace this same 
truth through some of the advanced stages 
of the Christian's experience. Let us pro- 
ceed to this in the following chapter. 



Chapter XL 

THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE 
WILL. 

(Continued.) 

IN the preceding chapter an attempt has 
been made to set out the Will in practi- 
cal distinction to the other mental and 
spiritual activates with which it is so often 
confused ; and the principle that in all Chris- 
tian experience God deals with man through 
man's will was shown through the Scrip- 
tures to be well founded as regards the ini- 
tial experience of Salvation. We shall now 
attempt to show the testimony of the Word 
on this subject in relation to some of the 
various phases of Christian experience fol- 
lowing salvation. 

We may say then that 

II. In consecration God deals with the 
Will. If this were fully understood there 
surely would be many more believers liv- 
ing a joyful consecrated life, for there are 
numbers who want to do God's will in com- 
pleteness, but do not know how. There are 
those who spend hours and even days at 



184 Spirit, Soul and Body 

an altar in great mental distress and bodily 
exhaustion, trying to come to a place where 
they feel they are wholly the Lord's. Much 
of this is unwise and very unsatisfactory. 

To be sure there is often a struggle, but 
that struggle is not with God nor with our 
feelings, but with our own will. The mo- 
ment we make up our minds to be wholly 
the Lord's that moment we become His en- 
tirely. If there is a struggle, it is not be- 
cause God is unwilling to accept us or re- 
luctant to show His approval of our offer- 
ing,, but because Ave have not yet fully de- 
cided to make that offering unto Him. 

A clear understanding of John vii. 17, 
should make this question very plain. There 
we read, "If any man will do His will he 
shall know the doctrine * * * ?: This is not 
merely a statement of a future contingency 
to the effect that if it should happen that 
if anyone should do God's will, that person 
would then receive a special enlightenment 
as to God's doctrine, but, so far as the doing 
of the will of God is concerned, it is a state- 
ment as to how that will is to be done. The 
clause translated literally reads as follows: 
"If anv man will to do His will * * * " The 



The Sanctification of the Will 185 

way to do God's will is to will to do God's 
will. 

There are times when we feel like doing 
God's will in its completeness and there are 
times when we do not feel so, — but our feel- 
ings need have nothing to do with it. If 
we will to be His, we are truly His no mat- 
ter how we feel. For so many people, their 
experienec of consecration is indicated by 
the state of their emotions. This is disas- 
trous because the feelings fluctuate greatly. 
The slightest physical or mental disturb- 
ances may seriously affect one's feelings. 
The feelings are uncertain and capricious 
and the many passing moods and frames of 
mind are often without explanation and 
generally, so far as our spiritual life goes, 
without significance. 

It is a great mistake then to accept the 
passing color of the feeling as a reliable in- 
dication of spiritual conditions. When we 
do accept it and give way to the emotion 
which happens to be uppermost at that 
time, then before long our spiritual condi- 
tion really does come down to the low level 
indicated by our feelings. If we had re- 
fused to give way to the uncertain feeling 
but had insisted in our hearts that we were 



1 86 Spirit, Soul and Body 

truly the Lord's and had "willed to do His 
will" there would have been no trouble at 
all. 

It is so strange that we exercise our will 
against our feelings dozens of times a day in 
the unimportant matters of secular life, and 
then when it comes to the eternal interests 
of the spiritual life we immediately fall back 
into the baby stage and are swayed by our 
feelings. Who is there who has not had 
all his feelings remonstrating against some 
operation in the destist's chair? But it is 
his judgment that this dental work is event- 
ually for his good, although for the moment 
it causes him pain. He puts aside his feel- 
ings and rising up in the strength of his 
will insists that the work be done. 

Time after time the readers of this page 
have arisen early in the morning when the 
feelings of their bodies were against such an 
act. But they summoned their will to their 
aid and deliberately left their bed against 
their feelings. And yet, for none of these 
things does a man call himself a hero or ex- 
pect a martyr's crown. No more does he 
for going to work at a certain hour in the 
morning when he feels like staying home, 
or for attending to certain duties which fall 



The Sanctification of the Will 187 

to his lot during the day when he would 
much prefer doing something else. 

In all these cases, the will guided by the 
judgment decides against the desires and 
the feelings. We are continually doing this 
in everyday life. Why do we not live on 
the same manly plane in spiritual things? 
Why do we not continually do the will of 
God because our sanctified judgment is con- 
vinced that it is best to do His will? Why 
do we not rise up and "will to do His will," 
when at times we may not really in an emo- 
tional sense, desire to do His will or often 
may not actually feel like doing His will. 

What a wonderful liberty would come to 
many who are in darkness and bondage if 
they learned that when God wishes to know 
the true state of their consecration of heart 
he does not ask what they think about it or 
register the temperature of their feelings 
on the subject, but He regards their will ; 
and whatever they are willing to do, that 
He takes as the expression of their real 
selves. It appears, then, that we may be 
wholly the Lord's just so long as we will 
to be wholly His. 

III. In trial God deals with the Will. 
This follows the same lines as the previous 



1 88 Spirit, Soul and Body 

section on consecration. Very many times 
the trial is so great that the flesh breaks 
down and the mental reserve gives way. We 
weep or sigh or moan or cry out for fear 
and show in the expression of our faces and 
the carriage of our bodies, unmistakable evi- 
dences of distress. We may be unable to 
study, to eat, and even to sleep. The shock 
may be so great that we are all but crushed 
under it. But what a wonderful message it 
is to know that throughout all this the will 
may be standing true to God. Surely no 
other thing could have made Paul say, "I 
will rather glory in my infirmities" (II. 
Cor. xii. 9). 

On the field of battle the soldier may be 
so seriously wounded that the amputation 
of a limb is the only thing to save his life. 
Anaesthetics may be wanting and the opera- 
tion may have to be done in cold blood. And 
yet, if he is a wise man, though the pain is 
so intense that he screams in agony, and 
writhes under the surgeon's knife, he will 
nevertheless be saying to the surgeon now 
and then, "Surgeon, cut on." Here a man's 
will rises up above the sufferings of his body 
and the distress of sensations and affirms it- 
self as his true self. 



The Sanctification of the Will 189 

Christians suffering in trial can do the 
same thing. God does not notice whether 
or not the weak body gives way and the sen- 
sitive flesh quivers ; whether the transitory 
emotions cast the soul into deep despon- 
dency and the delicate mind is agitated and 
agonized by the intensity of the trial. He 
does not ask whether or not Ave weep or 
show any other physical evidence of trou- 
ble. H'e seeks for the attitude of the will 
and whatever he finds the will saying, that 
he accepts as final. 

If the will is remonstrating and com- 
plaining and blaming God, the Christian has 
surely failed in his trial. But if through all 
the suffering the will rises up and says to 
God, "Oh, Father, I accept this at Thy 
hands. Divine Surgeon, cut on," God con- 
siders that that soul has perfect victory in 
the trial. What a comforting and refresh- 
ing view this is, and how blessed to know 
that no matter how the feelings and the 
flesh give way under the shock, our wills 
may worship His will throughout the deep- 
est trial. 

IV. In temptation God deals with the 
Will. The will is the ultimate object of 
Satan's temptation. As has been indicated 



190 Spirit, Soul and Body 

elsewhere, Satan seems to be able to con- 
trol our feelings with comparative ease. It 
is not strange that he works upon these and 
so endeavores to drag our wills down to 
his bidding. 

It is a matter of fact that in temptation 
even the best of Christians do not always 
have the support of their feelings. Some- 
times their desires and their feelings are 
in favor of yielding to the temptation. It 
is worth a great deal to know that at such 
times no sin has been committed until our 
will takes a step toward the tempter and 
away from the Lord. It is a sad but true 
record that in the majority of instances the 
will follows the feelings. But it should not 
be and need not be. 

Our wills can say no, and can refuse to 
recognize the temptation. We can reckon 
ourselves dead to it (Romans vi. 11-13). 
Sometimes when a temptation comes to us 
we are so shocked to find our feelings fa- 
voring the temptation that we immediately 
break down and capitulate. This would not 
often happen if we understood that it is 
the attitude of the will which determines 
whether or not we do wrong. We may be 
tempted for hours at a time and our feelings 



The Sanctification of the Will 191 

may clamor for the gratification which the 
temptation offers, but if in our wills we re- 
fuse to acknowledge the claims of the tempt- 
er and insist that we are the Lord's and will 
to do His will there is no harm, but on the 
other hand we are greatly strengthened by 
the trial. 

V. In healing our bodies the Lord deals 
with the Will. This is very clearly indi- 
cated in John v, 6, where we read that Jesus 
asked the infirm man, "Wilt thou be made 
whole ?" The literal rendering of this would 
be, "Dost thou will to be made whole?" The 
man was not asked what his desires were, 
for of course he desired to be well ; but this 
is not enough. He was not questioned as to 
his theory on the subject, — as to how or 
when he might be made whole. Christ asked 
him whether his will took hold of the heal- 
ing as a gift of God. 

Disease often so affects the mind through 
the body that it is impossible for us in a dis- 
eased condition to have joyful, hopeful and 
victorious feelings. If our healing depend- 
ed upon the presence of this kind of emo- 
tion, we could seldom be healed. But we 
are to learn that we may rise up above our 
emotions and take the promised healing 



192 Spirit, Soul and Body 

from the Lord, not according to our feelings, 
but according to what His Word says and 
what attitude our will takes toward His 
Word. 

VI. In prayer God deals with the Will. 
This is a subject of very great importance 
and a matter on which there is much dis- 
astrous ignorance among the people of the 
Lord. 

Let us notice carefully the teaching as to 
this point from several Scriptures. For in- 
stance John xv. 7 reads : "If ye abide in Me 
and My words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will and it shall be done unto you." 
This verse is often understood as saying 
that we may ask anything we want and we 
shall receive it; or that we may ask any- 
thing we happen to think of and God will 
give it to us. Consequently, we often won- 
der why everything we mention in prayer 
is not provided for us according to this 
verse. But such is an incorrect understand- 
ing of the promise. 

In the first place there are two very im- 
portant conditions to be met before we can 
ask as He tells us and be sure to receive. In 
the second place, we are to ask only what 
we will, which does not mean necessarily 



The Sanctification of the Will 193 

what; we think or what we desire. This 
means that our prayers are not to be roamed 
through in a careless spiritual reverie, but 
are to be filled with all our heart and soul. 

The same truth is brought to us by the 
example of the Master. John xvi. 24 tells 
us how he prayed. Hie said, "Father, I will 
that they also whom Thou hast given me, 
be with me where I am." Let us notice here 
that Christ said, "I will." This was the way 
He prayed. His will prayed and everything 
"He asked came not "from some passing wave 
of feeling or from some sudden thought, but 
from the depths of His will. He did not 
ask for certain things so much as willed that 
God should do those things, and they were 
done. 

Here is a very deep and delicate point, 
but if we can see it without being led astray 
by a false conception of it it will make 
prayer mean more to us than it may have 
meant in the past. When we pray in the 
Holy Ghost, it is not so much a matter of 
requesting as it is of standing by God's side, 
our wills fused with His, and deliberately 
willing things to come to pass. Not that 
they are brought to pass by the force of our 
own wills in any sense at all, — which is the 



194 Spirit, Soul and Body 

erroneous teaching of many of the latter- 
day false prophets. But that our wills act- 
ing in the full power of the Spirit set God's 
omnipotence into motion and He causes the 
things to come to pass which we will shall 
come to pass. 

This does not mean that God submits 
Himself to us absolutely and becomes the 
machine through which we work, but it 
does mean that He offers to do for us many 
things which it is His pleasure to accom- 
plish, but that He does not put His forces 
into operation toward accomplishing these 
things until we take the place of spiritual 
authority He has delegated to us and be- 
come in the truest sense His co-workers. 
Without our co-operation He has indicated 
He will do very little. It is our sanctified 
wills in prayer and faith which set free and 
put into motion the mighty forces of God. 

And all this means more still. It means 
for instance that we can pray with our wills 
when our feelings are not up to the desired 
standard. So much so-called prayer is 
largely emotional, as one prays who grows 
stronger in emotion and prays more ear- 
nestly and the two re-act upon each other 
and cause the general vigor of the prayer 



The Sanctification of the Will 195 

to increase until the person prays with un- 
usual force and calls forth many responses 
from those who are kneeling round him. 

Much of this is in "danger of being purely 
human : not that it is necessarily sinful, but 
it is often not Spirit-inspired. It is simply 
human earnestness artificially produced. 
One is carried on a wave of emotion and ut- 
ters violent prayers, saying things he does 
not mean, making statements he could not 
make deliberately and thoughtfully and 
asking for things which he does not at all 
believe he shall receive. Such prayers are 
bodily or mental or emotional, rather than 
spiritual. It is possible to pray w r ith great 
fervency and at the same time to have our 
wills in the prayer in every sense, but it is 
difficult to do this until we have learned 
by careful disciplining of the spirit how to 
keep out the purely human factors. 

As a rule those prayers which we pray 
when we do not feel very much like pray- 
ing are the deepest prayers of all, — strange 
as it may seem. Such prayers would not be 
offered if we did not gird up the loins of our 
minds and deliberately force ourselves step 
by step through the opposing forces. We 
never pray like this without meaning what 



196 Spirit, Soul and Body 

we say, for if we did not mean it with all 
our hearts we would not make the effort to 
say it. In such instances we are not swept 
along on an emotional wave, but we work 
our way up hill toward God, being compelled 
to use our sanctified wills at every step. 
Such prayers we really mean; what we ask 
for we really want; and what we say to 
God we really know that we say it. 

If there are times then when we are as- 
tounded to find that we do not feel like pray- 
ing, are we not to pray just because the 
feeling is not at hand? Not if we are men 
and women in Christ! If we are babes we 
will give way to the emotion of the moment 
and neglect to pray, but if we have learned 
that in prayer as in everything else God 
deals not w r ith our feelings, but with our 
wills, we will defy our feelings, and with our 
wills will address the Lord as though there 
were no hindrance at all to real prayer. And, 
as a matter of fact, there is none. 

This revelation of Scripture makes it pos- 
sible for us to pray at any time under any 
circumstances, if only our heart is right with 
God. f 

VII. The Will and the Weather. Under 
this heading attention may be called to the 



The Sanctification of the Will 197 

general influence of our environment upon 
our spiritual life. By environment we must 
include not only the conditions outside the 
body, but the bodily conditions outside the 
mind. 

It is amusing and at the same time pa- 
thetic to note what slaves God's people are to 
bodily and environmental conditions. As 
has been said before there are many 
Christians who are better indicators of 
weather conditions than the little instru- 
ments we hang outside our doors and call 
barometers. On bright, dry days such 
Christians are cheerful and are praising the 
Lord. On dark, muggy days they are 
strangely silent, and are doubtful and dis- 
couraged. They do not enjoy their Bible 
and do not feel like praying. They begin to 
wonder whether or not it pays to serve 
God. In case after case of this kind the real 
difficulty is not in the heart or in the will, 
but in the weather. 

We cannot deny the fact that matters of 
climate and temperature directly affect the 
spontaneity of the mind. Through the mind, 
these affect the general trend of our Chris- 
tian experience unless we have been so fa- 
vored by grace as to live our spiritual lives 



198 Spirit, Soul and Body 

in the depths of our wills. Everybody is 
cheerful on a bright day. It does not take 
religion to make a man whistle or a woman 
sing on such days. For a Christian, there- 
fore, to be full of brightness on a day like 
this, is no direct indication of divine grace. 
The very conditions of the weather compel 
a corresponding response of good cheer and 
optimism. 

It would not be strange if we should 
some day learn that much that is taken for 
the blessing of the Lord is more strictly a 
case of good digestion, a sound liver and a 
bright day with plenty of ozone in the air. 
This does not mean that the Lord cannot 
bless us on such days, but it should rather 
mean that if we are not just as near Him 
on depressing days as on invigorating days, 
so much of our brightness is purely natural 
and not supernatural. 

When our body is weary, when our nerves 
are exhausted or when our system is not 
properly nourished, it is not a spiritual mat- 
ter but a purely physiological reaction to be 
inclined to be gloomy and doubtful. To be 
sure some darkness and some doubt comes 
from the presence of sin. Nevertheless it is 
highly probable that much of it is a mis- 



The Sanctification of the Will 199 

interpreted reflection of bodily conditions. 
This is why so many people do not have the 
spiritual joy on a morning after an evening 
of great religious uplift. There has been 
a nervous exhaustion, so a physical reac- 
tion makes itself felt, and is often misunder- 
stood as a spiritual symptom. 

Just so long as the Lord's people live in 
their feelings will they be the miserable 
prey of all these fluctuating conditions; but 
as soon as they learn that God deals with 
their wills, they will possess the secret of 
stability and evenness in Christian life, and 
will then know how to live victoriously 
above the things that oppress and depress. 

This part of the subject could be enlarged 
to a great extent, but these scattered sug- 
gestions must suffice to start us thinking, 
watching and praying along these lines un- 
til we learn how much there is in our life 
which we call spiritual, but which in truth 
is purely natural. We need that keen ope- 
ration of the Word of God which is able to 
divide "asunder soul and spirit" (Hebrews 
iv. 12). We must learn that God is the 
source and constant foundation of our 
Christian experience and that our connection 
with God is not made by cords of emotion 



2oo Spirit, Soul and Body 

or by communicating flashes of thought, but 
by the mighty chains of a sanctified will. 

In all this discussion of the place of the 
Will in the Christian life let it be distinctly 
understood that the writer does not mean to 
state or imply that one can make himself 
what he wishes simply by using his "will 
power." The "will power" as it is generally 
understood is just the opposite idea from 
what is urged in these pages. Our human 
will power amounts to very little. But when 
we yield our wills to God and link them with 
His, then great things may follow. 

We are not to will ourselves good by our 
own might, but we are to will to let Him 
make us good by His power. As the Scrip- 
ture with which we opened this subject says, 
"What wilt thou that I SHALL DO unto 
thee?" All the effective power comes from 
the Lord and belongs to the Divine realm. 
But we deal with Him and obtain the bene- 
fits of the working of His power by com- 
municating with Him in our wills rather 
than in the less central and fundamental 
parts of our being. Throughout, the Will- 
ing is our part, the Powerful Performing 
is His part. 



Chapter XII. 

THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE 
EMOTIONS. 

THERE are many Scriptures which fur- 
nish an excellent basis for a study of 
God's dealings with our emotional na- 
ture. We may at this time refer to just 
one (I. Peter i, 8), "Whom having not seen 
ye loved; in whom though now ye see Him 
not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy un- 
speakable and full of glory." An immedi- 
ate bodily experience is absent from this 
verse, for we have "not seen" Christ with 
our bodily eyes. And yet we "love" Him, 
which is an emotional experience, for love is 
our greatest emotion. The latter part of 
the verse draws the distinction quite clear- 
ly between an emotional and a physical ex- 
perience. We read that we "rejoice with 
joy," — which is purely emotional. Although 
we "see Him not," which would be physical 
or mental. This emotional experience can- 
not be translated into fitting bodily expres- 
sions for it is "unspeakable." We have then 
in this verse several distinct notes of the 
emotional life. 



202 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Throughout the New Testament this part 
of man's nature is repeatedly referred to in 
connection with Christian experience, and 
any scheme of Christian life which does not 
give place to the emotions is imperfect. We 
are to regard the emotional nature of man as 
not necessarily wrong or carnal. Emotions 
are a part of the complete nature of a nor- 
mal human being. They are implanted by 
God and are not to be destroyed, but rather 
sanctified. One who has no emotion is not a 
complete man, he is yet unfinished. If we 
were to follow out the relation of the emo- 
tions to Christian experience we would re- 
quire an entire book for this subject alone. 
Let it be sufficient to have our attention 
called to some of the leading bearings of the 
subject. 

It will be remembered that the mind of 
man is by common consent divided into 
three classes of activities ; named respect- 
ively intellect, sensibility, and will. The 
sensibilities are, in a broad sense, the emo- 
tions. We therefore speak of man as think- 
ing, feeling and willing. These three divis- 
ions of the human mind are not of equal im- 
portance in any individual human experi- 
ence, but they are all essentially very impor- 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 203 

tant and not one can be neglected in the 
Christian life. If Christ provided a complete 
redemption for the complete man, He has 
provided redemption for the emotions. Let 
us proceed to notice briefly the importance 
of the emotional nature. 

I. First of all it may be advisable to give 
attention to the inter-relation between the 
emotional nature and the body. This is ex- 
pressed in two directions ; the effect of the 
emotions on the body and the influence of 
the body on the emotions. 

1. The effect of the emotions on the body. 
It has been quite satisfactorily demonstrated 
in laboratories that every serious emotion 
in the mind is accompanied by some bodily 
change, and it is practically certain that this 
parallelism holds true of even the slightest 
emotional states. With great emotions, the 
physical concomitant is very noticeable ; 
with slight emotions it may be beneath the 
threshold of attention. When, for instance, 
one is very angry, — which is an emotional 
state, the body gives many well known evi- 
dences of the inward condition. The same 
is true of extreme fear, hatred, contempt, 
pity and other emotions. It may be difficult 
to believe that the finer and less intense 



204 Spirit, Soul and Body 

emotions have some physical accompani- 
ment, but such seems to be the case. Out of 
this bodily effect of emotional states follow 
two important facts for the Christian. 

The first of these to be mentioned is that 
we are constantly betraying to others our 
emotional condition. We are of course aware 
of this when our emotions are very intense, 
but are inclined to forget it or disbelieve it 
when they are slight. While it is true that 
we may so learn to conceal our feelings as 
to deceive the outside world occasionally, it 
nevertheless remains a fact that we are al- 
most continually testifying to others of our 
inward condition. The way we walk, the 
manner in which we hold our head, the ex- 
pression of our face, the tone of our voice 
and dozens of other things great and small 
enter into this complex but efficient mani- 
festation of mental condition. 

Others read us when we are not aware of 
it. We are continually testifying in some 
way. If we say one thing with our lips and 
another thing by the unconscious emotional 
manifestations of our bodies, men are far 
more likely to believe the latter than the 
former. Our friends and acquaintances will 
often be aware of certain things in us with- 



The Sanctificatioii of the Emotions 205 

out being conscious of the method by which 
they came to the knowledge of the existence 
of these things. They may not realize that it 
was the unconscious testimony of our bod- 
ies ; they may not be able to place their fin- 
ger on any definite indication of our inward 
state, but they have received the confession 
in their finer consciousness nevertheless, 
and have the knowledge of certain condi- 
tions within us for which they may be un- 
able to give a reason. 

If our inner life is not what it ought to 
be, we are unconsciously betraying that fact. 
If we preach something but do not believe 
it as we preach it, our bodies delicately give 
the lie to our sermons and men refuse to be 
impressed by our words. We can arise in 
meeting and testify to the goodness of the 
Lord while His joy is not in our hearts, but 
we surely indicate through our body the ab- 
sence of that professed joy, and our testi- 
mony consequently is not according to what 
our emotions say through our bodies. If we 
attempt to talk to a friend about Christian 
things, and those things do not have a living 
place in our hearts, though our words may 
be excellent the impression is more likely 
to be according to the real condition of our 



2o6 Spirit, Soul and Body 

inner life, testified to unconsciously through 
the body. If we follow out this line of think- 
ing into the details of daily life, we shall be 
impressed and astounded at the great impor- 
tance of having sanctified emotions. 

The second fact growing out of the effect 
of the emotions on the body has to do with 
health. It is well known that certain men- 
tal states interfere with the nutritive proc- 
esses of the body, while other undesirable 
mental states actually throw poison into the 
system. People not infrequently die as a 
result of a fit of anger. There is a great 
truth in the influence of the mind over the 
body. Christian Scientists have gotten hold 
of this and through it have probably accom- 
plished most of their cases of healing, al- 
though they have hidden the simple scien- 
tific fact beneath a mess of unscriptural the- 
ology and unreasonable philosophy. Many 
other healing cults have used this fact of 
mental influence over bodily functions to 
great advantage. It is a psychological and 
a physiological fact which is unquestioned 
in the best scientific centers that we control 
and alter the functions of the body by the 
conditions of the mind. 

Of all our mental conditions none others 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 207 

are so intense as our emotional states, and 
these therefore often have more to do with 
our bodily condition than have our intellec- 
tual processes or our volitional activities. 
Some kinds of emotion will interfere with 
the secretion of digestive juices or other 
necessary products of the glands of the body, 
some emotions will affect the heart beat and 
the depth of inspiration and expiration, other 
forms may affect the muscular contractions 
of the important organs of the digestive sys- 
tem, while still others through their effect 
on the nervous mechanism, may greatly dis- 
turb the delicate balance of the distribution 
of the blood. These things do not belong to 
the unscientific dreams of astrology and al- 
chemy, but are established beyond dispute 
as facts of the first order. 

Those Christians therefore who need the 
encouragement in their soul of healthy bod- 
ies, cannot afford to have unsound emotions 
in their mind, for such emotions will dis- 
turb the functions of the body. Those who 
trust the Lord as their Healer cannot have 
unchristian emotions coursing through their 
soul, for such emotions give rise to disor- 
dered bodily activities which lead to dis- 
ease. We can hardly expect the Lord to 



208 Spirit, Soul and Body 

heal diseases and disorders which we our- 
selves induce by permitting unsanctified 
emotions to possess our minds. 

The Scripture which says, "A merry heart 
doeth good like a medicine," is not a bit of 
poetry or of elaborate oriental imagery, but 
is a scientifically correct physical and spir- 
itual statement. Our emotions are continu- 
ally affecting our bodies, much more so than 
we realize, and for this reason they should 
be of the right kind. In fact one of the con- 
ditions of divine health, which is better than 
divine healing, is that the emotional nature 
be sanctified as a bulwark to physical health 
and a prevention of bodily disorders. 

2. Having noticed the effect of the emo- 
tions on the body let us turn the problem 
around and see briefly the influence of the 
body on the emotions. There is without 
dpubt this reciprocal relation between these 
two parts of our being. A healthy body is 
almost sure to be accompanied by a happy 
emotional state and on the other hand a 
body whose functions are disturbed makes 
it well nigh impossible for its owner to rid 
himself of distressing emotions. The emo- 
tion of fear is often the reflection of bodily 
conditions more than the result of danger- 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 209 

ous objects seen without. Sometimes we 
are afraid but cio not know why we are 
afraid or what we are afraid of : certain con- 
ditions in the body have caused this emo- 
tion to arise. 

The same is true of many other emotions. 
Discouragement, gloom, unbelief and doubt 
may have their source in a heart which is 
not right with God, but we should not lay 
the entire blame there until first we assure 
ourselves that our body is healthy. As has 
been indicated elsewhere, a disordered liver 
is responsible for a large portion of our so- 
called spiritual irregularities. Professor 
William James, recently professor in Har- 
vard University, maintains that instead of 
the emotions giving rise to bodily states, 
the finest analysis of conditions satisfies him 
that bodily states always give rise to emo- 
tions and that all emotions are but mental 
reacions to physical conditions. Many care- 
ful students of the human body and the hu- 
man mind look favorably upon this view. 
Whether or not we wish to go to such an ex- 
treme, it remains beyond question that pro- 
nounced bodily conditions are inevitably ac- 
companied by corresponding emotional 
states. 



210 Spirit, Soul and Body 

The thing for the sanctified Christian to 
learn from this is that a life perfectly in the 
Hoi}' Spirit demands a body in good con- 
dition. Inasmuch as our emotional life is 
part and parcel of our Christian experience 
just as it is part and parcel of all normal 
human living we must take every means 
possible to ensure a right condition of our 
emotional life. In view of this we surely 
owe it to our souls to give our bodies 
proper nourishment and proper exercise. It 
is a Christian duty to see that our physical 
mechanism is periodically and sufficiently 
recuperated and rested, chiefly by sleep. 
This all means moreover that the health of 
all our organs may be regarded as a spirit- 
ual as well as a physical requisite. 

The temptation is great to follow this 
subject into more detailed application, but 
the above few remarks must be allowed to 
suggest to each reader a line of prayerful 
thought which he should follow up ior him- 
self concerning this important subject of 
the inter-relation of the emotions and the 
body. 

II. It will pay us in the next place to give 
a little time to considering the relations be- 
tween the emotions and the will. We have 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 211 

found a very close relationship existing be- 
tween the emotions and the body. We find 
just as close an one between the emotions 
and the will, and one that is more serious 
in its results if the emotions be not sancti- 
fied. 

It is general}^ acknowledged that every ac- 
tion on the part of man is ordered and exe- 
cuted by his will, so it can be truthfully said 
that whatever man does his will is respon- 
sible for it because it causes the act. But this 
is not the bottom of the question. There 
are influences acting on the will which de- 
cide the attitude of the wiTl in these things. 
The will is supreme when it rises up in its 
own God-given nobility ; but as a matter of 
fact it often kneels before other things and 
allows its power to be swayed by other in- 
fluences. 

Our general experience leads us to see that 
the will almost always acts at the bidding 
of one or both of two forces, — the intellect 
and the emotions. Often the will does as 
the body in its desires, passions or appetites, 
demands, but in this instance we may say, 
speaking generally, that the emotional na- 
ture takes up the desires of the body and 
make their plea its own. Thus it still re- 



212 Spirit, Soul and Body 

mains that an action of the will is accord- 
ing either to a judgment of the intellect or 
to a pressure of the emotions, or both. 

When one's intellect convinces him that 
it is right and profitable for him to do a cer- 
tain thing, and when at the same time his 
emotions urge the doing of that same thing, 
his will acts as a result of the combined in- 
fluences of the judgment and the feelings. 
When, again, one's intellect convinces him 
that it is wrong and harmful for him to do 
a certain thing, but his emotions neverthe- 
less plead for that thing; if he goes on and 
does this he is disregarding his intellect and 
being swayed by his emotions. Once again, 
if a man's judgment commends a certain ac- 
tion as being highly advisable, but his emo- 
tions rebel at the suggestion and urge that 
the action be not entered into ; and then the 
man goes and does as the intellect advises, 
he is obeying his safer guide and denying the 
unwise and excessive cravings of the feel- 
ings. It is very hard to imagine an action 
on the part of man which would be contrary 
both to his judgment and his emotions. 
Some acts of spite and stubbornness may 
seem at* first to come under this head, but 
a little deeper investigation will prove that 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 213 

these are really victories for the emotional 
life, because there are certain emotional 
states of satisfaction to carnal people in do- 
ing such things. 

These then are the various ways in which 
man may act. Let us take the average 
Christian and inquire which influence chief- 
ly controls the decisions of his will : is it 
his intellect and judgment or his feelings 
and emotions? The wider and longer an 
acquaintance one has had among the pro- 
fessed people of God the more deeply is 
the impression fixed upon him that for the 
most part Christians are controlled by their 
emotions rather than by their intellects and 
judgment. It takes a strong Christian indeed 
to deny the pleadings of the feelings and de- 
liberately, in cold blood, do some act be- 
cause his sanctified judgment tells him this 
is the thing the Lord would have him do. 

The very beginning of so-called Christian 
experience with many people is an emotional 
impulse. They do not come to Christ or 
take the first step in public for a Christian 
life until their emotions are aroused and 
they feel like doing what they do. Such is 
a bad start, and we do not wonder when so 
many professed Christians begin the Chris- 



214 Spirit, Soul and Body 

tian life only when their emotions impel 
them in that direction that they go along 
throughout their entire experience contin- 
ually subject to their emotional states. 

When these people feel like praying they 
pray. When they do not feel like reading 
the Word of God they neglect it. They go 
to Divine service or Christian work or not 
as they happen to feel when the time arrives 
for decision. When they feel discouraged 
they immediately become discouraged and 
throw the entire force of their will into the 
downward direction. When their emotions 
are in good shape they feel religious and 
are often talking of the blessings of the 
Lord. On certain days they have faith for 
great things, while on other days they have 
no faith for anything, — all of which is de- 
termined by that condition of their emotion- 
al life which happens to prevail on each day. 

To some it may appear an extreme state- 
ment when we say that for the most part 
Christians follow their feelings, emotions 
and desires rather than their reason, their 
judgment and their conscience; but we sub- 
mit the statement to the test of widespread 
religious experience sadly believing it is 
correct. If this is true of the larger num- 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 215 

ber of Christians, or even if it is true of only 
a smaller proportion, it is a very serious 
condition. When the people of the Lord are 
at the mercy of their emotions there is little 
help for them spiritually unless their emo- 
tions are sanctified. 

It is quite probable that in the deeper 
Christian life there is still a very close obe- 
dience to the bidding of the emotional na- 
ture, but in this instance the emotions are 
uplifted and transformed and do not urge 
to things which are likely to be wrong. We 
read in Psalm xxxvii. 4, "Delight thyself also 
in the Lord, and He shall give thee the de- 
sires of thine heart/' This is generally un- 
derstood to mean that the Lord will give 
us the things our hearts desire. Such can 
be true only of those who in the deepest 
sense delight themselves "in the Lord." 
With them their chief est joys and conse- 
quently their chiefest desires are "in the 
Lord," and He can consequently grant them 
the desires of their heart, when such desires 
have Himself as their object. 

May this verse however not mean some- 
thing different from this first understanding 
of it? M'ay it not mean that while the Lord 
may, under certain conditions, give us the 



216 Spirit, Soul and Body 

things our hearts desire, He will also give 
us the desires themselves in our hearts? 
May not "He shall give thee the desires of 
thine heart" include the promise that if we 
live as close to the Lord as we ought, the 
desires which we find in our heart will turn 
out to be God given desires? Of this we 
are not sure, but it is a suggestion well 
worth considering. It is at least in har- 
mony with the burden of this chapter on 
the Sanctification of the Emotions. 

It our emotions could be thus sanctified 
we would be perfectly safe in following them 
in the decisions of our wills. It would then 
turn out however that we would not need 
to disregard the advice of our judgment if 
we accepted the request of our emotions, 
for the two would agree. Sanctified intel- 
lect and sanctified emotions will be in com- 
plete harmony. 

When there is not this harmony in our ac- 
tual experience we need to proceed very 
slowly indeed if we contemplate disregard- 
ing the judgment and obeying the emotions. 
When there is a discrepancy between these 
two factors of our being, the emotions rath- 
er than the judgment are almost always lia- 
ble to be in the wrong. Because of this, and 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 217 

because of the fact already presented that 
man is controlled in his will much more of- 
ten by his emotions than by his judgment, 
we all can see how absolutely necessary it 
is in Christian life to have the em'otional na- 
ture perfectly controlled by the Holy Spirit. 
This wonderful ideal may not be fully real- 
ized by any saint, but we all can and ought 
to "press towarJ the mark of the high call- 
ing." 



Chapter XIII. 

THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE 
EMOTIONS. 

(Continued.) 

THIS important subject cannot well be 
dismissed at this point. Although there 
is not sufficient space for a detailed 
consideration, yet we must follow the mat- 
ter along a little further. 

III. We shall take up now some of the 
chief emotions and call attention to the 
need, the possibility and the direction of 
their being sanctified by the Spirit of God. 
A brief list of the more prominent emo- 
tions of the human soul would include the 
following: Love, Sympathy, Joy, Grief, 
Anger, Fear, Curiosity, Jealousy, Astonish- 
ment, Hope, emotions of the Comical, Beau- 
tiful, Sublime, Pathetic, emotions of Appro- 
val, Disapproval, Dependence, Adoration, 
etc. We consider but a few of these. 

i. The greatest emotion is Love. This 
word is made to cover a vast sweep of feel- 
ing and is used by many to include desires 
and passions. The word Love in common 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 219 

use indicates anything from the basest 
physical passion to the purest adoration of 
the deity. Its most prominent use has to 
do with marital conditions ; we speak of the 
bridegroom's love, the love of the wife, the 
parent's love and the love of the child. These 
earthly relationships which serve as an oc- 
casion for the expression of love, should be 
regarded by the Lord's people, as is sug- 
gested in the fifth chapter of Ephesians, as 
types and greatly reduced figures of the re- 
lationship which should hold between the 
church and the heavenly Bridegroom, be- 
tween a child of God and his heavenly 
Father. 

The lowest stages of the sanctification of 
the emotion of love would undoubtedly be 
to free the soul from those base and carnal 
passions which are contrary to the highest 
ethics and the uniform teaching of Scrip- 
ture. There are many of God's children, 
some of them actively engaged in His work, 
whose inner lives are still contaminated and 
disturbed by the bold pressure of desires 
along forbidden lines, and whose testimony 
and service for the Master are often blight- 
ed by the sudden victory of some of these 
baser things which are often called Love. 



220 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Only the power of the Spirit of God can 
refine this emotion in the lives of men and 
lift it to a plane of purity and wbolesome- 
ness. 

In this connection reference may be made 
to the doctrine and practice of some who in- 
sist that they are so holy through the work 
of the Spirit that they can ignore the com- 
monly accepted sex proprieties of society 
and defy the natural inclinations and pro- 
pensities of the nature of man. and who as 
a result often actually practice the most re- 
pulsive and sinful things seemingly under 
the delusion that such things have become 
pure to them. All this is the deceit of Satan 
and is rotten to the core. True love has no 
place here, much less the love of the Spirit. 
This is the case of an emotion run wild, 
professing to be sanctified while in truth it 
is appropriating most unusual license. 

In the experiences of men and women in 
what is ordinarily called experiences of love 
there needs to be special assistance from the 
Holy Spirit. The children of God must 
learn that even in this normal and necessary 
activity of their souls they are still to keep 
within the highway of holiness. There are 
some to be sure who go to the extreme that 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 221 

all human love is sinful, especially previous 
to the actual marriage relation. Such a 
stand is unscriptural and untenable: no mar- 
riage relationship should be entered upon 
except on the basis of the deepest mutual 
love as a preliminary condition and as an 
indication of the will of God. 

Nevertheless there is much of love be- 
tween Christian young people which is quite 
earthly and carnal, quite wilful and inde- 
pendent of the plan of God; and much of it 
is vacillating and transitory. Many young 
Christians are snared by earthly friendships 
which are out of the will of God, but which 
demand their entire attention and distract 
their interest from the Lord and His service. 
Many Christian workers are led astray for 
similar reasons and are soon laid aside by 
the Master Workman because they have lost 
their real love for His service and their effi- 
ciency and simple-heartedness therein. 

It is probably one of the most difficult 
practical problems of Christian life to know 
just what place to give this normal and 
necessary activity so that we may keep in 
the Spirit on one hand and not interfere with 
the plan of God for our earthly lives on the 
other. A very safe rule to follow is that in 






222 Spirit, Soul and Body 

all instances of doubt we should give the 
benefit of the uncertainty to the side of sep- 
aration and sacrifice. If we have made a 
mistake in doing this the Lord can very 
easily indicate it to us and overrule. If we 
make a mistake in deciding in the other di- 
rection, it often puts us in relationships 
which cannot without great difficulty be dis- 
continued. 

In the home there is a paramount need 
for love. Here again there are some who 
insist that if we love the Lord as we ought 
we cannot love our husbands or wives or 
children. These good people fail to see that 
true love for those whom God has given us 
on earth is not only not inconsistent with 
our love for the Lord Himself, but is great- 
ly deepened by that love. A husband who 
becomes a Christian will love his wife there- 
after as never before. A Christian wife who 
is graciously baptized with the Holy Spirit, 
will have a truer love for her husband than 
she had in the past. 

The love of parents for their children is 
most natural and necessary, but this love 
is often allowed to take the place of abso- 
lute direction in the fife, even in defiance 
of the will of God. When the Lord is 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 223 

pleased to take a little one to another world, 
or when after the young man has finished his 
preparation for life work the Spirit calls 
him to preach the Gospel in Africa or Chi- 
na, — then the parents often rebel in heart 
and speak bitterly of the providence and 
love of God. This is an instance of unsanc- 
tified love; not that it is wrong to love our 
offspring and to desire deeply to have them 
near us, but because even that proper love 
must be made subject to the greater w r ill of 
God and the wider love for those Who are 
lost. 

The sanctification of the emotion of love 
in the hearts of young people will cause 
them to keep the fifth commandment in a 
truer sense than ever before. They will 
not grow indifferent to the needs and prefer- 
ences of their fathers and mothers, they will 
not grow careless in bestowing those little 
tokens of attention and respect, they will 
not grow harsh and cruel, even when they 
themselves follow the Lord in one direction 
while the parents do not follow that way. 
For sanctified sons and daughters there will 
be the deepest respect and the truest love 
for the fathers and mothers in the flesh. 

What is called Christian love is in great 



224 Spirit, Soul and Body 

need of sanctifi cation. Our attitude toward 
the brethren is to be characterized by the 
unfeigned love of the Spirit. But this is of- 
ten not so. What is called Christian love 
is quite generally natural affinity, in which 
a group of workers in the same church or 
neighborhood are held together not because 
they are one in Christ, but because they are 
similar and agreeable to each other in dis- 
position. 

Often a Christian speaks with evident 
gratification of his deep Christian love for 
some other Christian or group of Christians, 
while at the same time there is still an- 
other Christian or group of Christians for 
whom he has an ill concealed aversion. He 
goes into raptures over the testimony of 
some and sits with stolid resentful face un- 
der the testimony of others ; he supports the 
prayers of some by fervent Amens, while 
he becomes suspiciously silent during the 
supplications of others. There are some in 
the church whom he always meets warmly 
and with whom he delights to talk about 
spiritual things, while there are others 
whom he purposely avoids in all these ways. 
This is the common experience among 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 225 

Christians and looks very much like unsanc- 
tified love of the brethren. 

The Love of Christ is extended toward 
all His children alike and if that love con- 
trols our hearts we will have undisguised 
Christian affection for all the saints of the 
Lord's church. This does not mean that 
we may not have our special friends in 
Christian service, for even Jesus seemed 
to find some with whom He chose to hold 
fellowship on spiritual matters more than 
with the great crowd of followers. But it 
does mean nevertheless that we are never 
to become so exclusive with a few as to 
violate in any sense the spiritual courtesy 
of pure Christian love toward all who are 
the Lord's. 

There are some who speak much and 
think fondly of their Christian love for some 
of the saints, but who are ready to slander 
and criticise and even quarrel with others of 
the same body. None of this is worthy the 
name of the love of Christ. If the Lord's 
people were sanctified in Christian love there 
would be no church quarrels, no roots of 
bitterness, no evil speaking, no suspicion and 
mistrust. We need to see that it is impos- 
sible to have pure and fervent love in the 



226 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Spirit for a few, while we do not have at 
least pure love for all, though it need not be 
as fervent as our love for some. 

One other phase of the life of love needs 
to be brought to mind, — our love for the 
Lord. It is one of the earliest and most 
common expression of Christian testimony, 
"I love the Lord." But it is one of the rar- 
est actual experiences of the soul notwith- 
standing. 

There are many tests of our love for 
Christ. M!ay mention be made of three of 
them? (a) If we love the Lord we will 
obey Him. "If ye love Me keep M[y com- 
mandments. " If we truly love Him His 
commandments will not be grievous, we will 
take pleasure in reading His Word, in order 
to learn what His will is, and we will never 
speak of sacrifice in carrying out that will 
though it takes us to the ends of the earth 
or deprives us of the realization of our fond- 
est human dreams or leads us to unusual 
labor and hard service. We have no right 
to tell the Lord or anyone else that we love 
Him until we are making an honest and 
voluntary effort to do all His command- 
ments. 

(b) If we love the Lord we will have con- 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 22J 

fidence in Him. No relation toward another 
is worthy the name of Love that is not based 
upon and accompanied by absolute confi- 
dence in the character of that person. If 
we love the Lord we will not doubt Him. 
We will not question His will or be filled 
with anxiety when we have to go a few days 
without some outward token of His care 
for us. We can trust Him behind the clouds, 
knowing that He is true to us, though we 
may have received no recent physical evi- 
dence of His working in our behalf. 

(c) If we love the Lord we will love our 
brethren. The Apostle John tells of this 
most forcibly in his First Epistle, chapter 
iv., verse 20, "If a man say I love God, and 
hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that 
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen ?" 

This verse seems to authorize the state- 
ment that our love for God is true only so 
far as it is accompanied by a love for our 
brother. If this is a correct test of our love 
to the Lord, then that love does not exist in 
our hearts, no matter how we may think it 
does, unles we love all the brethren. It be- 
comes a very serious question whether we 



228 Spirit, Soul and Body 

truly love the Lord at all. Love for Him is 
not such a little and superficial thing as we 
often think. He who does not love his 
brother may have a very difficult time prov- 
ing from the Scriptures that he loves the 
Lord God. 

These three tests of our love for God are 
sufficient to remind us of the depths and 
importance of this relationship. Love is 
part of the emotional life. It should be the 
highest activity of our emotions. Even 
though it deals in part with a divine Object 
of love, it nevertheless needs to be purified 
and strengthened by the sanctifying work 
of the Spirit of God. 

2. We may glance at the emotion of joy. 
The subject of Love has been purposely 
considered in a wider manner because Love 
is so fundamental and because this broader 
consideration of one emotion will serve to 
suggest how we may take up in our own 
prayerful thoughts the other emotions and 
subject them in turn to the searching of the 
Spirit that they might in turn be sanctified 
by the Spirit. A few words only will be 
necessary on two or three additional emo- 
tions. 

There is much joy which is purely nat- 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 229 

ural. It does not follow that such joy is 
sinful, but it is necessary to be sure that 
such joy is not in connection with the for- 
bidden things of the world or the life of 
sense. There is a certain proper degree of 
pleasure in the favorable circumstances of 
natural life. Often the greater danger in 
this respect is that the joy which is proper 
in a moderate degree is allowed to go to un- 
scriptural lengths and become the chief 
rather than the subordinate pleasure of our 
life. 

There should be no earthly pleasure 
which is not based on things that are true 
and pure and beneficial. The sanctification 
of the Spirit does not mean that we are to 
become long-faced and funereal ; but on the 
other hand it means that many of the pleas- 
ures of this earthly life will be completely 
taken from our experiences and the rest of 
them reduced to a truly secondary position. 

If our emotion of joy is sanctified, we will 
have a deep experience of the joy of the 
Lord This joy is unlike all other joys. It 
is not based on favorable circumstances or 
a satisfactory past, or even upon a promis- 
ing future. It has nothing directly to do 
with our condition of body or frame of mind. 



230 Spirit, Soul and Body 

It is entirely independent of what others say 
and think, and often of what we may think 
ourselves. It is a springing up within us 
of the deepest, richest sensation of perfect 
satisfaction, — not in ourselves, but a satis- 
faction seemingly without a reason. 

In fact when we seek for a reason to ex- 
plain our joy in the Lord we can find no rea- 
son that is at all sufficient. This joy is a 
little touch of the very life of God, who is 
forever joyful. It causes us to be supreme- 
ly happy and perfectly independent of our 
condition and oblivious to our surroundings. 
The nearest association of this joy seems to 
be the person of Jesus Himself. We seem 
to be glad because He is with us and because 
we have Him. Beyond that we can give no 
reason ; but the experience itself is far more 
conclusive than a thousand reasons. 

This joy is not brought about by any 
method of logical thinking, but springs up 
from the fountain of the Spirit. This is the 
highest condition of this emotion of joy 
which runs through great ranges of expe- 
rience in the human soul, — from the coarse 
and disgusting pleasures of the sinful life 
to the holy moments of inexpressible delight 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 231 

in the spiritual presence of the Lord Him- 
self. 

If our emotion of joy is sanctified, we shall 
also learn to distinguish between the joy of 
the Lord and joy in circumstances. Very 
often we feel happy because things are go- 
ing right and we are in good condition. 
When things begin to go wrong, then we 
lose our joy. At such times we say we have 
lost the joy of the Lord; but such is not 
true. What we have lost is the natural joy 
which was dependent upon circumstances. 
If we had been experiencing the joy of the 
Lord it would not have changed with a 
change of circumstances, but would have 
persisted unabated. We do not mean by 
this that we are not to enjoy favorable en- 
vironment, for we should learn to see that 
this also is a gift of God. But we are to 
rise above environment for our source of 
inner satisfaction, and are to learn not to 
mistake the joy of simply natural response 
to favorable surroundings as the joy of the 
Holy Spirit. 

3. The emotion of grief or sorrow pre- 
sents in many respects the correlative condi- 
tions of the emotions of joy. Sorrow is a 
divinely implanted possibility of the human 



232 Spirit, Soul and Body 

soul. To be sanctified entirely does not mean 
that we will have no more sorrow but it does 
mean that our sorrow will be changed and 
purified. We will no longer grieve deeply 
over the petty disappointments of our earth- 
ly life. We will no longer be in great inner 
distress when the will of God requires a 
change of plan. 

Many times the tears we shed are but in- 
direct ways of expressing our rebellion 
against the plan of the Lord. A sanctified 
life will sometimes shed tears, but not tears 
of rebellion. Our sorrows will be like the 
sorrows of Jesus. He grieved over sin. We 
differ from Him in that we have sin of our 
own to grieve over. We would therefore 
sorrow over our own sin and also for the 
sin of others. 

If God's children were sanctified in this 
emotion of grief, they would not be greatly 
disturbed over some trifling temporal loss 
and wholly unmoved over the sins in their 
hearts, — as is so generally their experience 
now. Then their earthly distresses would 
affect them little, while any weakness of 
soul would cause them real sorrow. Their 
greatest grief would be over any sin that 
crept into their own life. How strangely 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 233 

this emotion has been perverted! We go 
wild with grief over losses which in the light 
of eternity amount to nothing, while sinful 
conditions of soul that will affect countless 
ages to come cause us practically no dis- 
tress. 

If we were sanctified in this emotion we 
would sorrow also over the sins of the 
world and the lost souls all around us. Jesus 
wept over Jerusalem. His grief was never 
selfish, but always because of others. If 
our tears were for others instead of being 
caused by personal misfortune and trial, we 
might then believe that the Spirit of God 
had sanctified our emotion of sorrow. 

4. Let one more emotion suffice in this 
short list: the emotion of Sympathy. All 
human beings above the savage state have 
sympathy. The noblest man who walked on 
earth, Jesus of Nazareth, had sympathy. 
The quality of good or ill is not in the ex- 
istence of this emotion, but in the direction 
of its activity. 

There are those in civilized society who 
weep to distraction over the death of a pet 
poodle dog but are never moved to make 
the slightest effort to relieve the condition 
of the heathen, whose souls are perishing 



234 Spirit, Soul and Body 

by the thousands every day. There are 
those who will sit in their comfortable box 
at the theatre and shed abundant tears over 
the artificial distress of the heroine on the 
stage, while the coachman who drove them 
to the playhouse sits freezing on his open 
seat outside the building. 

It surely is not wrong to be moved with 
sympathy over the sight of the crippled, the 
deformed and the unfortunate ; but our emo- 
tional sympathy is surely unsanctified if we 
allow these things to stir us deeply while we 
remain stolid and unmoved at the thought of 
the greater physical distress of the heathen 
world and the unspeakably greater spiritual 
gloom that awaits them. 

We often read that Jesus was moved with 
compassion. His emotion of sympathy was 
very strong. But we will always find that 
His sympathy was not expended on the triv- 
ial and temporary things of human experi- 
ence, but was most aroused by the great un- 
derlying needs and spiritual distresses of 
the thousands that swept past Him in the 
stream of human life. Sympathy is good 
and very necessary, but it is needful to be 
sanctified by the Spirit of God. 



The Sanctification of the Emotions 235 

Other emotions might be added. How- 
ever let us allow the Lord to open to us 
this great inner life. Let us ask Him to lay 
His finger on its weak places, and to reveal 
to us its dominance over so many other of 
our activities. When we see these things in 
His light we shall never rest until the Spirit 
rules in this part of our lives as truly as 
in any other part. 



Chapter XIV. 
SOUL AND SPIRIT. 

THE question of the distinction between 
soul and spirit must at least be 
touched upon, but the matter will not 
be given a complete discussion. It may be 
disappointing to some readers to seem to 
find such a small relative proportion of the 
book given to a discussion of the Spirit, as 
compared to the portions given to the Body 
and the Mind; especially when it is agreed 
by all that the Spirit is the most important 
of any of the parts of man's being. But as a 
matter of fact the spirit has been imminent 
throughout all the preceding chapters. The 
body was discussed in its relation to the 
spirit, and then the various activities of the 
mind were discussed in their relation to the 
spirit. The spirit and the spiritual interests 
therefore have permeated these messages 
throughout, and for this reason it is not so 
necessary to give special attention to them 
in a distinct form. 

Moreover the question of the spirit and 
its distinction from the soul is so confused 
and to such a large degree still unsettled, 



Soul and Spirit 2tf 

that it seems needless to enter deeply into 
the discussion except in a book on spiritual 
anthropology, or Christian philosophy. It 
will be advantageous how'ever to take a few 
glimpses at this subject from various points 
of view, not in order to settle all the ques- 
tions, but in order to familiarize ourselves 
with the various phases of this much dis- 
cussed relationship. 

I. Theories of the relation between soul 
and spirit. A brief reference to some of the 
leading theories held by Christian teachers 
and thinkers will show us how futile it is for 
us to expect to settle the question easily or 
immediately. 

To the minds of some the spirit is as dif- 
ferent from the soul as the soul is from the 
body, and is equally as distinct. To the 
minds of others the combination, in what we 
call life, of body and spirit interacting with 
each other gives rise to the other term, the 
soul. To others, the soul represents purely 
the animal life, — those vital functions which 
cause the body to carry on its metabolism. 
Animals would have souls and to a degree 
plants would have them, for life with its 
various forms of activity characterizes all 
these, 



238 Spirit, Soul and Body 

To some the spirit is the region of the 
will, the center of the activities of ego, and 
all else is soul. There are those who believe 
that the spirit is that portion of man which 
is added to his being in the experience of 
regeneration : the unsaved would have no 
spirit, only the saved would possess this 
part. Some believe that the spirit is that 
part of man where God dwells; this com- 
partment of the human being would be un- 
occupied until Christ enters in salvation. 

A very common view is that the spirit 
represents all the spiritual tendencies and 
relations, while the soul represents the sel- 
fish and carnal tendencies and relations. 
People are thus spoken of as being soulish 
or spiritual as the case may be. There are 
some who say that the body is the seat of 
sense-consciousness; the soul is the seat of 
self-consciousness, and the spirit the seat 
of God-consciousness. Again there are those 
who affirm that it is the spirit which is the 
region of self-consciousness as well as of 
God-consciousnes. Personality, whatever 
that may mean to different writers, is lo- 
cated by some in the region of the soul and 
by others in the region of the spirit. 

From these representations it will appear 



Soul and Spirit 239 

that there is no discernable unanimity of 
opinion among those who have thought and 
studied, often with much prayerfulness, over 
this question. 

Many ingenious theories have been pro- 
pounded and many pretty generalizations 
have been made, but confusion still reigns. 
Often those who start out with the clearest 
differentiation contradict themselves before 
they finish and are guilty of attributing the 
same activities and prerogatives to both 
spirit and soul, which destroys any well 
marked distinction between the two. It may 
transpire that it is not of great practical spir- 
itual value to come to a clean-cut theoret- 
ical statement of difference between what 
these two words Soul and Spirit signify. 

II. Dichotomy and Trichotomy. These 
words express the views respectively of 
those who believe that man has a dual na- 
ture and of those who believe he is a tripar- 
tite being. The one point concerning the two 
theories which may be worth emphasizing 
in this connection is that they both can ap- 
parently be proved from the Scriptures. If 
they are both found in the Word of God it 
does not mean that the Word of God con- 
tradicts itself, but more likely that there are 



240 Spirit, Soul and Body 

different points of view from which the na- 
ture of man may be studied. 

As to dichotomy, two passages will suf- 
fice, for they represent a number of others 
to the same effect. Matthew x. 28: "Fear 
not them which kill the body, but are not 
able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell." Here the soul is set off as distinct 
from' the body and the two are stated as 
comprising the entire man. I. Corinthians 
v. 3, where Paul says, "I verily, as absent 
in body but present in spirit, have judged 
already as though I were present, concern- 
ing Him that hath done this deed." In this 
verse the spirit is distinguished from the 
body, as the preceding verse distinguished 
the soul from the body. Here also the two 
terms, one referring to the material and the 
other to the immaterial part of man, seem 
to be taken to represent the entire being. 

The trichotomous theory is supported by 
two plain passages. I. Thessalonians v. 23: 
"I pray God your whole spirit and soul and 
body be preserved blameless unto the com- 
ing of our Lord Jesus Christ." There can be 
no question that here the apostle ascribes 
these three parts to the being of man and 



Soul and Spirit 241 

seemingly makes them mutually exclusive. 
Hebrews iv. 12: "The Word of God is quick 
and powerful and sharper than any two 
edged sword, piercing even to the dividing 
asunder of soul and spirit/' In this passage 
the body is not mentioned, but a distinct 
statement is made concerning the problem 
now confronting us and surely the implica- 
tion is that the soul and the spirit can be di- 
vided from each other and therefore must be 
somewhat separate and distinct as to na- 
ture or activity. There are more New Tes- 
tament passages implying the twofold divis- 
ion of man than the threefold, but these two 
which speak of Him as a threefold being are 
more direct in their statement than most of 
the passages favoring the twofold division. 

III. What is the soul? There are two 
Greek words whose meanings are helpful 
in this study. The first is "pneuma," which 
literally means wind, but is much more of- 
ten the highest New Testament word for 
spirit. The Holy Spirit is called the Holy 
"Pneuma." The other word is "psyche," 
and is more commonly translated soul. We 
will not attempt a complete answer to the 
question heading this paragraph, What is 
the soul, but will call attention to the fact 



242 Spirit, Soul and Body 

that many things which we generally sup- 
pose can be true of only the highest part of 
man, the part most often expressed by the 
word spirit, are likewise declared to be par- 
ticipated in by the soul. 

It may be best to give a selected list of 
Scripture passages in which in all instances 
the word in the Greek is "psyche," and never 
"pneuma." For instance, Matthew xx. 28, 
declares that the Son of Mian came "to 
give His life a ransom for many." This is 
one of the strongest passages in the four 
gospels for the substitutionary theory of the 
atonement. The ransom Jesus gave is 
stated as being his "psyche." 

Hebrews vi. 19, "which hope we have as 
an anchor of the soul, both sure and stead- 
fast." The "psyche" here must be the high- 
er and spiritual part of man because it is a 
part needing to be anchored "within the 
veil." 

Revelation vi. 9: "When he had opened 
the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls 
of them that were slain for the Word of 
God." A similar statement is found in Rev- 
elation xx. 4: "I saw the souls of them that 
were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and 
for the Word of God." We could just as 



Soul and Spirit 243 

correctly say that what John saw was the 
immortal spirits of the martyrs; but the 
word used is not "pneuma," but "psyche." 
We see that the "psyche" has survived the 
death of the body and is continuing in the 
next life under heavenly conditions. 

James i. 21 : "Lay apart all filthiness and 
superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with 
meekness the engrafted Word which is able 
to save your souls," — and surely these souls 
must include the very highest part of man 
for they are to be "saved." The Greek word 
here is "psyche." 

M'ark viii. 36, 37 : "For what shall it prof- 
it a man if he shall gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul? or what shall a man give 
in exchange for his soul?" There can be 
no doubt that the part of man here named 
under the word soul is the immortal part, 
that which we generally call his spirit: but 
the Greek word used is "psyche." 

Hebrews x. 38: "Now the just shall live 
by faith : but if any man draw back my soul 
shall have no pleasure in him." This is a 
statement in the first person by God Him- 
self. When He says, "My soul," it means 
God's soul. It is significant that the word 
here used is "psyche" and not "pneuma." 



244 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Whatever the soul is, therefore, God also 
has one, for here He speaks of His own 
"psyche." 

It is not at all necessary to quote any of 
the multitude of passages in which the word 
u pneuma" is used for the highest part of 
man and is translated correctly spirit. There 
is no question about his point. But many 
who have attempted to lay hard and fast 
lines of division between the soul and the 
spirit have overlooked the facts arising from 
the passages just quoted, and seem to be in 
ignorance of the repeated statements of 
Scripture in which conditions generally at- 
tributed to the spirit are attributed likewise 
to the soul, and things which many believe 
could be said truthfully of the spirit only, 
are here said just as distinctly of the soul. 

To be sure, this exhibit of passages does 
not settle the question, What is the soul? 
And this chapter or this book or this writer 
does not attempt or pretend to settle this 
question in its fulness. But the Scripture 
facts here brought forward may shed some 
light on the problem and make possible one 
more step towards its solution. 

IV. A very brief view of the entire ques- 
tion, extending in results considerably be- 



Soul and Spirit 245 

yond the limits of the detailed matter just 
presented, may bring the subject out of lim- 
bo into a somewhat definite place in our 
minds. 

It seems to be found that the definitions 
and distinctions of writers and teachers do 
not agree with each other, and in many 
cases a given exposition of this subject does 
not agree with itself. 

To this may be added the fact that the 
Scriptures seem to use these two expressions 
somewhat synonomously. A careful, criti- 
cal study will undoubtedly reveal that the 
words are not exact symonyms; but never- 
theless for general and popular understand- 
ing they may be used interchangeably. They 
are so used in various instances in the 
Bible. 

From these two generalizations it may 
safely follow that it is not worth while to 
attempt any exact discrimination. In fact, 
such may be found to be impossible, if it 
aims to be based entirely on the Word of 
God. The Scriptures do not attempt to 
give us a view of the soul as clearly distinct 
from the spirit or of the spirit as clearly dis- 
tinct from the soul. There are many who 
roam at will in this field to no practical 



246 Spirit, Soul and Body 

profit and probably to more or less confu- 
sion in their own minds and the minds of 
others. When the Word of God does not 
make a simple and evident distinction we 
are not justified in going too far in forcing 
such a distinction upon the brethren. 

We must believe that man himself is a 
unity, the Ego is indivisible. The man here 
meant however is the person, the imma- 
terial, spiritual entity. This being, this per- 
son, dwells temporarily in the body, but this 
body is not an essential part of his personal 
unity. Here is the first great division within 
man as we find him in this earthly life. He 
has a material body and he has a spiritual 
personality. This first division of him is 
probably what is meant in those Scripture 
passages which speak of man as being made 
up of two parts rather than of three. 

But we may further divide man. His 
body is no longer easily divisible, but his 
spiritual part is ; and we may find that the 
larger spiritual personality of man is com- 
posed of what may be called soul and spirit, 
which would make two parts. It is proba- 
bly this second division of man, including 
the first, which is in the mind of the Holy 
Spirit when he writes those New Testament 



Soul and Spirit 247 

passages in which man is regarded as having 
a threefold nature. 

Just what is the difference between the 
soul and the spirit, we do not know; and 
just where the soul ends and the spirit be- 
gins no one has ever been able to point out 
to us with assurance. In a general way we 
may rest in the idea that the soul is asso- 
ciated with the lower and natural life of 
man more than the spirit. To attempt a 
more definite division is hazardous. 

There are many who do not hesitate to 
state a much more exact differentiation be- 
tween these two parts of man's being, but it 
does not thereby follow that their statement 
must surely be correct. A far more impor- 
tant and profitable thing for us as Chris- 
tians to be concerned about is that our en- 
tire inner man, whatever we wish to name it 
and into how many parts we wish to divide 
it, is in complete and constant subjection to 
the Spirit of God. We may enjoy a most 
victorious experience in this direction with- 
out being compelled to subscribe to a de- 
tailed theory. 



Chapter XV. 
WHAT IS THE HEART? 

THE word heart is one of the most com- 
mon in religious nomenclature. We 
are continually talking about the con- 
dition of our hearts and asking the Lord to 
bless us in our hearts. It has already been 
suggested in several earlier portions of this 
book that Christians have no very clear un- 
derstanding of what the word heart means 
in this spiritual use. It cannot possibly 
mean the muscular organ located in the 
breast. What it does mean we may attempt 
to ascertain, but only in somewhat of a gen- 
eral way. 

I. It may be advisable first of all to em- 
phasize the fact that man is at bottom a 
unity; the Ego is indivisible. Some talk of 
the conscious self and the sub-conscious 
self; but whatever is meant by the latter 
term it cannot be accepted in any meaning 
that would make possible another person 
in addition to the conscious self. The only 
possible exception might be in those rare 
pathological cases of multiple personality, 
which are always temporary and abnormal. 



What is the Hfcart? 249 

But even then there is no evidence that more 
than one person inhabits the same body. 
Every human being feels in the deepest re- 
cesses of his nature that he is one and not 
two or three. He is always himself. 

II. This unit personality however has var- 
ious forms of activity. These forms by gen- 
eral consent are gathered into three groups : 
forms of intellect, forms of volition, and 
forms of emotion; or in other words think- 
ing, willing and feeling. 

We are not to get the impression that 
these are well defined compartments of the 
human mind. It is rather the same mind 
working in different directions. One may 
make movements with his hand in various 
directions; he may move it vertically, hori- 
zontally, obliquely, in front of his body, or 
may move it to and from his body; he may 
make zig-zag, spiral or circular motions; 
he may describe triangles, squares, ellipses 
or pentagons, — but it is the same hand de- 
scribing all these motions. The difference 
is not in the hand but in the direction of the 
activity. And more, in making one motion 
he may be using some part of another mo- 
tion, so the motions are not all absolutely 
distinct but overlap to a certain extent. 



250 Spirit, Soul and Body 

This may be an illustration of the various 
activities of the human soul. Sometimes the 
Ego is thinking or reasoning, sometimes it 
is willing or deciding, and sometimes it is 
feeling, either enjoying or suffering: but it 
is the same personality throughout. Some- 
times it is both willing and thinking, and 
sometimes it is both willing and feeling and 
sometimes again it is both feeling and think- 
ing. There are some activities which it is 
almost impossible to locate absolutely in one 
realm or the other of these three larger di- 
visions of human activity. 

We are not to think therefore that one 
part of the mind is given over to volition, an- 
other part is the seat of emotion, while a 
third distinct part carries on the thinking. 
The entire mind, the undivided personality, 
is engaged in each and all of these forms of 
self-activity, either at separate times or at 
the same time as the case may be. 

III. Having this general view of the unity 
and variety of the human soul, we are better 
prepared to ask ourselves what the Lord 
means when He uses the word heart so often 
in the Scriptures, and what we should mean 
when we use this same word in our relig- 
ious speech. To make the matter brief it 



What is the Heart? 251 

may be said that it is quite difficult to find 
any special meaning for the word heart that 
is not covered by one or more of these three 
divisions of human activity, namely, think- 
ing, feeling, willing. Sometimes the word 
heart is used with reference to the intellect, 
sometimes it means the emotions, and some- 
times again it has reference to the will. 
There are still other occasions where its use 
is in the field of two or even all three of 
these activities. 

This threefold use of the word could be 
proven by a large number of examples from 
the Scripture. We will call attention to just 
a few under each division. 

1. The Heart as Intellect. The following 
passages employ the word heart in a sense 
which clearly indicates that the intellect or 
thinking activities of the human soul are re- 
ferred to chiefly. 

Genesis vi. 5 : "God saw that the wicked- 
ness of man was great in the earth, and that 
every imagination of the thoughts of his 
heart was only evil continually/' We find 
here that the heart is the place of imagina- 
tion, which by general consent is an intel- 
lectual faculty. 

Deuteronomy xv. 9: "Beware that there 



252 Spirit, Soul and Body 

be not a thought in thy wicked heart, say- 
ing, * * * " Here again We find the heart as 
the place of thoughts, which of course be- 
long to the intellectual activites of the Ego. 

Proverbs xxiii. 7: "As he thinketh in his 
heart so is he." The thinking here is done in 
the heart. We know that it is done in the 
intellect; w r hich means that the heart is 
used synonymously for the intellect. 

Luke xxiv, 38": "He said unto them, Why 
are ye troubled and why do thoughts arise 
in your hearts?" Jesus recognized the same 
relation already pointed out and speaks of 
the heart as the place of thoughts. 

These passages are sufficient to show that 
in some instances at least the word heart is 
used in the Bible to designate that part of 
man generally called the intellect, that part 
where imagination and thinking have their 
seat. 

2. The Heart as Emotion. The passages 
following show the word heart used in quite 
a different sense. Here it undoubtedly is 
used as the seat of the emotions or feelings. 

I. Samuel i. 8: "Hannah, why weepest 
thou? and why eatest thou not? and why 
is thy heart grieved?" Grief is here referred 
to the heart and grief is an emotion. 



What is the Heart? 253 

I. Samuel ii. 1 : "And Hannah prayed and 
said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine 
horn is exalted in the Lord." Here we find 
the heart rejoicing just as in the previous 
passage the heart was grieving. Joy is just 
as truly an emotion as sorrow and both are 
located in the heart. 

Psalm iv. 7: "Thou hast put gladness in 
my heart, more than in the time that their 
corn and their wine increased." Here an 
emotion similar to joy is located also in the 
heart, being caused to spring up there by 
the Lord Himself. 

Proverbs xv. 13 : "A merry heart maketh 
a cheerful countenance ; but by sorrow of the 
heart the spirit is broken." This verse is 
quite remarkable in that it indicates two 
opposite emotions, merriness and sorrow, as 
both being active in the heart; and speaks 
of the body as being affected by the condi- 
tion of the heart, "a merry heart maketh a 
cheerful countenance" ; and also shows the 
effect of the heart on the will, "by sorrow of 
the heart the spirit is broken." 

This second meaning of the heart, namely, 
as the center of the emotional life, is the 
most common in both secular and religious 
speech. When people speak of their heart 



254 Spirit, Soul and Body 

they generally mean their feelings. This 
use we find to be correct and Scriptural, but 
it is necessary to remember that the word 
heart is also used with other meanings. 

3. The Heart as Will. The will is the de- 
ciding factor in the human soul and is that 
power which puts things into action. One 
may wish and desire to do a certain thing, 
but he does not do it until his will gives the 
command. One may think over the various 
advantages or disadvantages of doing a cer- 
tain thing, but he does not begin to do it or 
cease doing it until the mandate goes forth 
from his will. A few Scriptures may be se- 
lected from the great number which show 
that the heart is frequently used to express 
those activities which we know are carried 
on by the will. 

Jeremiah v. 23 : "But this people hath a 
revolting and a rebellious heart ; they are 
revolted and gone." Rebellion is at bot- 
tom a stubborness of the will, a refusal to 
submit to God's will. 

Ezekiel xxviii. 2 : "Thou art a man and 
not God, though thou set thine heart as the 
heart of God." Here the fixed determination 
of the will or "heart" is referred to. 

Daniel i. 8: "Daniel purposed in his heart 



What is the Heart? 255 

that he would not defile himself with the 
portion of the king's meat, nor with the 
wine which he drank." This final determi- 
nation w r as made in Daniel's will, and was 
adhered to because his will stood firm for 
the thing- he believed to be right. 

Ephesians vi. 6: "Not with eye service 
as men pleasers, but as the servants of 
Christ doing the will of God from the heart." 
This means that the will of God is to be 
done not only outwardly and ostensibly, but 
as an expression of our deepest and most 
voluntary determination. Such determina- 
tion can be held only in that portion of our 
being which is ordinarily designated the 
will. Here the expression is "doing the will 
of God from the heart," which shows that 
the heart is used in place of the more tech- 
nical word will. 

II. Corinthians ix. 7: "Every man ac- 
cording as he purposes in his heart so let 
him give." The will is the center of de- 
termination and purpose, not only in the act 
of benevolence but in every activity of the 
natural or the spiritual life. Here the word 
heart is used to express this function of the 
human soul which is more generally desig- 
nated by the word will, 



256 Spirit, Soul and Body 

Many other Scriptures might be added to 
these, which are literally selected at random, 
but these are surely sufficient to show that 
sometimes when the Lord speaks of the 
heart He refers to that activity of man's 
being which is used in deciding and purpos- 
ing and ordering things into action. It is 
universally admited that this activity is the 
will. 

We do not mean to say that every place in 
which the word heart is used in the Scrip- 
ture can be taken and immediately and defi- 
nitely referred to either the intellect or the 
emotions or the will. Sometimes it is diffi- 
cult to place a passage in any one of these 
three divisions. Quite often the action of 
the heart referred to is a combination of two 
of these forms of activity, and occasionally 
it represents all three. 

Sometimes the word is used in such a 
general sense that it seems to refer not so 
much to one or more of these three distinct 
forms of self-activity, but rather to the Ego 
itself, the conscious subject of these activi- 
ties. Questions of disposition and tempera- 
ment, shades of feeling and moods of 
thought and various other fine distinctions 
which have to do more with personality as 



What is the Heart? 257 

a unit than with any of these three forms 
of the activity of personality, are often cov- 
ered by the word heart. 

We may say then in conclusion that this 
word in its simplest use in the Scriptures 
means the person himself, the very Ego, 
the unified personality which is meant by 
one when he says "I," or when he addresses 
another as "you." Yet this personality is 
often regarded in one of the three divisions 
of its activities, and the heart therefore can 
frequently be located in connection with one 
of these divisions. This still means the 
same unified personality and undivided self, 
but it means that in a particular instance 
this self is acting more in the form of voli- 
tion than of thought or more in the form of 
feeling than volition, etc., as the case may 
be. 

This quite imperfect review of the use of 
the word heart is not technical or intended 
to be dogmatic. It has been given rather to 
serve as a basis and suggestion for further 
study among those who are interested in this 
line of investigation. We need to see that 
these somewhat technical and verbal mean- 
ings are not to be pushed into prominence 
and made the basis of fundamental doctrine 



258 Spirit, Soul and Body 

or serious experiences. Above all we need 
to be careful lest our inclination to work 
along these lines makes us the slaves of the 
letter and deprives us of the liberty and 
blessing of the Spirit. 

The most important thing by far is to be 
sure that our entire heart, our complete self, 
thoughts, emotions, will; body, soul and 
spirit, are brought into subjection to the 
Holy Spirit and are then taken by Him and 
raised to a higher plane to continue their 
natural and God-given form of activity at 
the Spirit's direction and in the power of 
the Lord, for the glory of God. If we ear- 
nestly seek this blessed place which the 
Scriptures point out to us as our duty and 
privilege, we may well afford to disregard 
a certain amount of terminology and techni- 
cal discussion. 

We do need however some general divis- 
ion of this field, for it is vast; and we need 
some practical suggestions as to the rela- 
tion of the various fundamental parts and 
activities of our complex being to the life of 
entire sanctification. If the suggestions 
made in the chapters that have now come 
to a close prove to be practically beneficial 
it will be much more valuable than as 



What is the Heart? 259 

though they served chiefly to increase our 
critical knowledge. God's people as a whole 
are perishing for lack of knowledge; but 
along with this they are perishing just as 
much for lack of living experience. Miay the 
Lord help us to use our knowledge of our 
spirit, soul and body in putting ourselves in 
a position where He may sanctify us wholly 
in all these parts and preserve us blameless 
unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. 



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